













LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 


Shelf 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 






















































588. Sl>Cil.£ .XUI 


t’KM'IC to Oii.Vi'S, 



17 to 27 VaNdeW>me^ $t 

•^IewYo^- 









^T~^Lrs\ \ J ^7* 


The Seaside LibraT^jWermffffirTSSW^^ 

frighted 1*85 by George Munro— Entered at the Post Office at New York at second class rates— Oct. 16, 1885. 




THE 


New York Fireside Companion. 


Essentially a Paper for tie Home Circle. 


PURE, BRIGHT AND INTERESTING. 


THE FIRESIDE COMPANION numbers among its contributors the best of 
living fiction writers. 

Its Detective Stories are the most absorbing ever published, and its spe- 
cialties are features peculiar to this journal. 


A Fashion Article, embracing the newest modes, prices, etc., by a noted 
modiste, is printed in every number. 

The Answers to Correspondents contain reliable information on every con 
ceivable subject. 


TERMS:— The New York Fireside Companion will be sent for one year, 
on receipt of $3: two copies for $5. Getters-up of clubs can afterward add 
single copies at $2.50 each. We will be responsible for remittances sent in 
Registered Letters or by Post-office Money Orders. Postage free. Specimen 
copies sent free. 


GEORGE 



Publisher, 


P. 0. Box 3751. 


17 to 27 Van&ewater Street, New York. 


l/ 

CHERRY. 


rmu. trfJL-i f&tjc tr,c 

1 Q " 


BY THE AUTHOR OF “A GREAT MISTAKE.” 



NEW YORK? 

GEORGE MUKRO, PUBLISHER, 

17 to * 27 Vandewater Street. 



PZ3 

.B3J27C4 


Works by the Author of “ A Great Mistake ” 


CONTAINED IN THE SEASIDE LIBRARY (POCKET EDITION): 


NO. 

244 A Great Mistake 
246 A Fatal Dower 
872 Phyllis’ Probation 
461 His Wedded Wife 
588 Cherry 


PRICE. 

20 

. 10 
10 

. 20 
10 


w 

vo 


4 


£ 


CHERRY. 


CHAPTER 1. 


Breakfast was ready, and Miss Beauclerk was waiting for her 
brother. 

The windows of the house in Eden Row were thrown wide open 
to the spring sunshine, but there was so little to be seen from them 
—only the red- brick houses over the way, and the budding lilacs 
pushing here and there their green leaves through the rusty railings 
—that the lady, no doubt, found the study of her own face in the 
oblong mirror over the chimney-piece a more agreeable method of 
passing the time, 

Not that the contemplation of its clear outlines and unfaded tints 
appeared, judging from her expression, to afford her unmixed satis- 
faction, as she stood steadily peering at her own reflection; now 
lifting the heavy, fair hair from her temples, and putting her eyes 
closer to the glass to inspect it, and again drawing back and turn- 
ing to the light that was beating in at the open windows, so as to 
scrutinize the lines about her eyes, and the contour of her throat 
and chin, in the unflattering brightness of the April morning. 

It was a handsome, clever, composed face that she saw; and in 
her clean linen gown, absolutely devoid of trimming or ornament, 
and with her tall figure, and upright bearing, Frances Beauclerk 
was undoubtedly a remarkable-looking, even an attractive woman 
still. 

Yet she sighed, as she at last moved away from the greenish- 
tini ed old mirror, and, going back to the break fast-table, took up 
for the twentieth time a letter that lay beside her brother’s plate— a 
letter written in a hand which had, at one time, been very familiar 
to Miss Beauclerk. She had a whole bundle of letters in the same 
hand upstairs in an old Japanese box, smelling of some quaint for- 
eign scent, in which she kept various mementos and trophies of 
her girlish days. 

Only the night before— reminded of her old lover by lighting 


4 


CHERRY. 


upon the not common name of Vanbrugh in the list of those injured 
in a recent railway accident— she had opened her cabinet of treas- 
ures, and looked over the yellowing envelopes addressed in the 
same thick black writing, with the bold capitals and dashes, tnat 
had met her eye that morning when she entered the little parlor. 

It was when she was a young beauty in her first season that Miss 
Beauclerk had refused William Vanbrugh, the head-clerk in her 
father’s office, and sent him away, in despair, to seek his fortune - 
and forgetfulness in New Zealand. She had not thought very much 
about it at the time. There were so many other luckless young men 
to be refused, and her life was so full of pleasures just then, aud of 
hints of greater conquests to come, that Miss Beauclerk had not 
much time to devote to her rejected suitors. 

And if, later, when the crash came, and friends and lovers 
fell away, if then Frances found herself thinking sometimes about 
poor Will Vanbrugh and his passionate prayers and protestations, 
what was the good of such thoughts? He was far enough away by 
that time. He did not know what had befallen her. They had never 
heard trom him since the day when he had sailed, and had sent that 
short blotted note from the hotel at Liverpool, bidding her farewell, 
and sending her his forgiveness for her cruelty, and a blessing, in 
broken, incoherent words. 

No, it was of no use to remember the poor fellow now. And yet 
Miss Beauclerk went on thinking ot him in a vague and fitful fash- 
ion, as she thought sometimes, in the dusk of the evening, when 
she sat alone, ot the old happy days of her life, and all that belonged 
to them. 

The happy days ended abruptly and cruelly with that awful oue 
when they had found her father lying dead on the library floor, his 
eyes staring horribly up at them, and a little empty bottle clinched 
in his stiffened hand. That dreadful hour marked, as with a ghastly 
finger, the division between their wealth and their poverty. 

Frances aud her young brother followed the dead man out of the 
luxurious house, in which, motherless, they had grown up together, 
and they never weut back to it again. Nor did Miss Beauclerk’s 
London adorers seek her in the smoky provincial town in which 
the orphaned boy ana girl found shelter after the storm that had 
burst upon their bewildered heads. 

An engagement which the young lady had formed was broken 
off by the gentleman’s family with but scant ceremony. Perhaps 
Frances would have been the first (u set her lover free, if she could 
have believed that it was her fortune, and not her handsome spirited 


CHERRY. 


5 


face, that had charmed him. And certainly she bore herself very 
proudly during their farewell interview, even contriving to laugh 
when Lord Wastelands spoke about his heart and his mother’s 
wishes. 

Miss Beauclerk took pains to restore all his not very valuable 
presents down to the minutest trifles, and as she did so she gravely 
assured the embarrassed young man that they were hardly the worse ( 
for wear, and would serve, with a little polishing up, for the next [ 
heiress who migiit be put up for sale in the Mayfair market. ! 

And so Lord Wastelands went away, hanging his head, and left [ 
handsome Frances Beauclerk, looking like a queen in her black ! 
gown, alone with her brother, in the little old house which had be- 
longed to her godmother, and which, al the old lady’s death, a year 
before, had been left, with a small legacy, to the then heiress. 
Frances had laughed, at the lime, about her “ property ” in Low- 
ford, but now she and Henry were glad to have a place in which to 
lay their heads. 

Miss Beauclerk met misfortune calmly, and did her best to avert 
further misery. Before many months she had obtained, by her 
own exertions, a situation for her brother in the office of Fordyce 
Brothers, a large manufacturing firm in Conyngham Lane; and Had 
put her shoulder to the wheel, besides, by going out herself as a 
visiting governess— her music-lessons especially being considered 
very well worth the terms she demanded. 

Old Fordyce, amused by the young lady’s straightforward and 
determined ways, and admiring her handsome face, had interested 
his wife in Miss Beauclerk, who, through that good-natured 
woman’s influence, had secured several pupils among the most 
substantial families in Lowiord. 

The young governess never talked about “ better days;” she was 
always cheerful, healthy, and interested in her work, and came, in j 
consequence, to be rather looked up to by the people who employed 
her, and who, in theii quiet provincial way, were quite aware of 
the subtle London odor that hung about Miss Beauclerk, and never 
forgot how near she had been to marrying a lord. They admired 
her, too, for her goodness to her brother, a rather heavy-looking un- 
interesting young man, who took after his father, and had none of 
Miss Beauclerk's stately blonde beauty, seeming fit for nothing but 
to plod on in the employment she Had put into His hands, and let 
himself he led in all things by his clever sister. 

It was Frances who chiefly supported the small house in Eden 
Row. Henry’s salary was little more than enough to keep him in 


6 


CHERRY* 


clothes; and his sister, when she was mapping out her newly ad- 
justed life, had told him, with her bright and somewhat contempt- 
uous smile, that she would make him a trifling allowance from her 
earnings for pocket-money, as she supposed young men would 
smoke, no matter how bad it might be for their health and for their 
sisters’ feelings. And so the two, having no relations living that 
they knew of, and being abandoned by the great world in which 
they had moved for a little time, settled down in their modest 
home, and closed the book of the past forever. 

The house was an old red-brick building, like all the others in the 
tranquil and grassy old court called Eden How, beyond whose iron 
gates the muffled roar of the great manufacturing town that surged 
on either side sounded like the far-off murmur of another and 
busier world. 

Within the ancient gateway, from whose arch an old lamp swung 
and cast its shadow on the flags, were silence, quiet sunshine, green 
leaves fluttering. The passage seemed haunted by pensive memo- 
ries of old- fashioned days, and of the generations whose feet had 
once paced its smooth-worn pavement to and fro, and who now lay 
at rest close by in the old church -yard of St. Mark’s 

The red-brick house was not without a charm of its own, in spite 
of its ugly mahogany furniture, its engravings of the Princess 
Charlotte, and its narrow windows. Its colors had been agreeably 
mellowed by time and smoke; the furniture was so threadbare as to 
be almost picturesque, and Frances had the good sense and good 
taste to let it all alone, and not attempt to introduce any modem 
prettinesses, which would only have been out of tune with the anti- 
quated background of her godmother’s belongings. 

Here, then, for some years the brother and sister lived; and the 
monotonous tranquillity of their existence bad been broken by only 
two occurrences — they could hardly he called events. 

One was that poor Harry fell in love with the gentle little sister 
of a fellow-clerk, at whose mother’s house tie used sometimes to 
call on summer evenings to smoke a pipe with Ben, while little 
Melissa sewed in the green trellised porch, and filled the brown jug 
with beer, when the young men had emptied it during their talk 
about books and politics, and the other subjects that interested them 
out of business hours. Melissa had been to a very good boarding- 
school; she had pretty shy manners, and a great deal of natural re- 
finement. She was of opinion that young Mr. Beauclerk talked very 
well, and was not all plain-looking when he smiled. 

Sometimes Henry would help her (o water the flowers in the little 


CHERRY. 


7 


strip of back-garden — mignonette and lupins, and gilly flowers, 
that were giving out tlieir evening perfumes — and a little knot of 
which would be stuck in Melissa’s belt. Melissa used to flush and 
tremble when Henry held Ihe watering-pot for her, or filled it at the 
pump in the yard. She never seemed to notice how round-shoul- 
dered and clumsy he was, or how he trampled on the borders when 
he followed her along the walks. 

And Henry found the companionship of the modest little thing 
very pleasant after his dull meals and hours at home, when Pran- 
ces, if she iound time to speak at all, was apt to laugh at him, and 
catch him up, and frighten the shy and blundering fellow with her 
hard, clever ways. Little Melissa looked up to him, and thought 
him very sensible, and so much better bred than the Lowford young 
men, tor all his clumsiness and uncouth ways. She knew from Ben 
that young Mr. Beaucierk was not clever “ in business,” and would 
not be likely to get on very fast, but in other ways — 

Two or three times, when Ben had work to do that delayed him 
at the office after hours, Henry had asked little Miss Garth to go for 
a walk with him across the fields beyond the factories, and he had 
told her a great many wonderful things about the birds and the 
flowers, and bad quoted beautiful lines from the poets that seemed to 
£et the swallows, and primroses, and the evening star so clearly be- 
fore Melissa’s eyes, that she could never forget the lines as long as 
she lived. Once they turned into the town instead of toward the 
meadows, and they looked into the shop-windows like two little chil- 
dren, and told each other what they would buy if they had money 
enough. 

Everything that young Mr. Beaucierk chose, as Ben’s shy little 
sister did not fail to remark, was fora house; a tiny little house, 
just fit, he declared, for a tiny little wife with big blue eyes that 
hardly ever looked up. ( 

Melissa, blushing very pink, declared that she did not see how 
the color of— of his wife’s eyes could matter, or what it had to do 
with bird-cages, and cottage pianos, and rosewood tables. But 
Henry declared that it did; and that, it he could not have the little 
blue-eyed wife, he did not want the bird-cage, or the piano either. 
And then he pressed Melissa’s little hand in his big clumsy palm, 
and looked down under the brim of her straw bonnet with his kind 
ugly eyes, and they walked home in a sweet and troubled silence 
which neither of them could have broken for the world. 

It was all very foolish, very pitiful; and no doubt it was as well 
that, another evening later. Miss Beaucierk, who happened to pass 


8 


CHERRY. 


by the Garths’ house on her way home, saw her brother and Melissa 
walking slowly toward her in the dusk, with clasped hands, and 
heads drooping toward each other. Her exclamation ot indignant 
surprise startled the sweethearts apart; and Melissa, turning pale at 
sight of her cold face, lost all control, and clung closer to Henry’s 
arm. 

. Henry went home with his sister, when he had taken Miss Garth 
to her own door; and Frances did her best to talk calmly and with- 
out anger of the ridiculous discovery she had made. What could he 
mean, she pleaded, by compromising that poor girl so seriously? 
How was it possible for him to marry on his salary? What culpa- 
ble weakness it all was! Miss Beauclerk wondered that Mrs. Garth, 
at least, had not more sense than to allow her daughter to become en- 
gaged to a penniless clerk who was barely able to support himself. 

Here Henry, abashed and unhappy, explained that there had been 
no talk of an engagement— that Mrs. Garth was the kindest of 
women— that it was he alone who had been to blame. 

Frances, with a relieved face, heard him to the end of his slow 
and broken sentences. If there were no engagement, she decided 
briefly, he must at once break with a connection that might end in 
a serious entanglement. She offered to go herself to the girl, and 
explain to her how impossible it was that there should be any talk 
ot marriage tor years and years to come, if ever. Miss Beauclerk 
would say nothing, she added, with a little tightening of her deli- 
cate mouth, as to Henry’s taste in the matter, though she had cer- 
tainly hoped that her brother would have looked higher. 

Henry turned pale at the thought of his timid little Melissa left 
unprotected to his sister’s inflexible explanations; he hastily prom- 
ised that he would himself take steps to atone tor his folly. He 
had not a word to say for himself during Miss Beauclerk’s sum- 
ming up of the case; he only sat biting his nails, and shuffling bis 
awkward feet, and making abrupt exclamations ot sorrow and im- 
potent repentance. 

All that she said was true, he acknowledged sadly, and with 
bowed head. He had been selfish and mad; and it was poor little 
Melissa who would have to suiter for his fault. He had promised 
Miss Beauclerk that he would give up going to the Garths. And, in- 
deed, the summer evenings were all but over; the weather would 
not permit much longer ot beer-drinking and conversation in the 
garden, or of rambles among the outlying fields and hedgerows of 
the old town. 

No doubt it was the autumn air that made Ben Garth’s little sis- 


CHERRY. 


0 


ter look so pale and wretched about that time. The little thing 
seemed to be drooping, like her own flowers, at the first touch of 
cold weather. 

Hem y could not bear to look at the child, when he met her at 
church or in the street. He would turn away and dart up side-ways 
and alleys, so as not to pass her or see the wistful and wondering 
look in her blue eyes. He could not sleep at night for thinking of f 
her. Often Frances, stirring comfortably in her own even slumbers, ~ 
would hear him tramping his floor till dawn, and he would come - 
down to breakfast with great dark rings round his eyes. This was 
in the first year of their life in Lowford, and Henry was little more 
than a boy. 

Once, in despair, he did say, coloring and stammering, that he 
thought Melissa would not be a great expense, and that if Fiances 
would only consent to receive her as a sister, he was sure it would 
make them all much happier. But Frances broke into an impatient 
laugh and frightened him again. 

“ 1 can not support your wife, my poor Henry, as well as you,” 
she said, not unkindly. “ Don’t you know that marriage is not for 
either of us, uuless— which is unlikely— we can marry some one 
who is able to keep us? Pray don’t speak of this any more. It 
pains me to have to refuse to listen to you. 

The young man, stung by his sister’s reminder that it was she 
who earned the most money, made a strong effort about that lime 
to get some night- work, which should add to his modest salary, but 
he did not succeed. As Ben had told Melissa, Henry Beauclerk was 
not clever in business. 

After awhile he heard that little Miss Garth had gone away to 
stay with a married sister in Manchester; and, except tor a decided 
coolness between him and Ben, there was nothing left of his brief 
dream but an empty aching in bis heart, and a iew r little ribbons 
and withered flowers, which he had locked away in his old school- 
boy desk. 

There is no cure like absence, it is said, for the heart-ache; and 
young folk get over these little things so easily, though they seem 
dreadful for the time. No doubt little Melissa should have got over 
it like a sensible girl, and not have given the lie to people older and 
moic experienced than herself, by remembering poor ugly tender 
Henry Beauclerk with so much obstinate fidelity. But, for all her 
gentleness and timidity, Henry’s little sweetheart found strength to 
die for love of him. 

She had always been delicate, her friends said, and Manchester 


10 


CHERRY. 


did not agree with her. But when Harry heard the news of her 
death— she was only eighteen— he rushed home to his sister through 
a great downpour of rain that was falling, and a painful scene en- 
sued in Miss Beauclerk’s parlor. Fiances dreaded, ever after, to 
think of that day. Her brother demanded money of her, and, trem- 
bling, she gave it; and asked no questions as he rushed away again 
through the rain, not to return that night, or for many days after. 

She went to the office and said that her brother was ill. And 
then, in unspeakable anxiety and dread, she went on with her les- 
sons and household duties as usual, waiting for him to come back. 
She left a light burning every night in the hall, and his supper laid, 
when she went to bed. She had her work to do the next day, of 
course, and could not afford to lose her rest. And at last one even- 
ing late she heard him come in and go upstairs as quietly as usual, 
and lock himself into his room. 

They met the next morning at breakfast as though nothing had 
happened; but Frances saw, not without a pang, that her brother 
had grov n suddenly old and round-shouldered and gray, and that 
he went about looking more uncouth and moody and unhappy than 
ever. 

The Garths, not long afterward, left Lowford, and went to settle 
in Manchester, where the little grave was that he had been to see; 
and, from that day forth, Henry never heard of them or saw them 
any more. 


CHAPTER II. 

As time wore on Miss Beauclerk ventured occasionally to reproach 
her brother, and to ask him, with a somewhat contemptuous smile, 
if he were the only one who had had to make sacrifices. This meant 
that Fiances had lately refused an offer from the brother of one of 
j her pupils who had been greatly impressed by her stately beauty, 
j Young Hale was only a clerk in an office like Ben Garth aud poor 
* Henry; but he was earning quite a large salary, and could have 
i offered Miss Beauclerk areally comfortable home. Nevertheless, 
Frances dismissed him as calmly as she had dismissed Lord Waste- 
lands some years before. 

She assured him that she did not mean to marry, that she had 
her brothers happiness to think of; and she thanked Mr. Hale tor 
the honor he had done her, in a manner that made the young man 
feel, to the fullest extent, the presumption of which he had been 
guilty. 


CHERRY. 


11 


Miss Fordyce, the eldest daughter of Henry’s employer, who was 
taking music-lessons at the time from Frances, could not help re- 
marking Fred Hale’s sudden attack of low spirits and the falling 
off in the frequency of his visits, and she spoke of it to her hand- 
some governess. Frances looked as if she considered the subject 
unworthy of a moment’s thought. 

“ a game or two of billiards will no doubt restore Mr. Hale to 
his usual high spirits,” she returned calmly, as she penciled the 
fingering of an intricate passage for her pupil. “ Now try that ca- 
denza again. Nothing but sheer hard work will ever enable you to ‘ 
conquer it. It is difficult, of course; the more glory in learning to 
play it with absolute correctness.” 

“ I don’t think Fred Hale is so fond of billiards as all that,” re- 
plied Jane Fordyce wistfully, letting her hands lie idly on the keys. 
Jane was engaged to Sir Charles West at the time of this conver- 
sation, though she w T as still practicing her music every day. But 
there had once been some little boy-and-girl fancy between her and 
Fred, which three years at a school in London had not succeeded 
in making her forget. 

“ We are wasting time,” suggested Miss Beauclerk, in her severe 
bright way; and Jane began languidly to attack the penciled run. 
But, as Frances w T as buttoning her gloves at the close of the lesson, 
Miss Fordyce returned, wbli a faint blush, to the subject of young 
Hale’s dejection. 

“ Do you really think Fred is dissipated, Miss Beauclerk?” she 
asked earnestly. “ Do— do you think he is unhappy about any- 
thing?” 

Frances turned and looked keenly at her pupil. Jane Fordyce had 
a sweet plain face and a gentle manner, and was altogether very 
nice for an heiress. 

“ Why should you suppose that 1 am in Mr. Hale's confidence?” 
the handsome governess demanded coolly. She did not feel that 
there was any cause for gratification in the conquest she had so un- 
consciously effected of poor Fred’s heart, nor had she the faintest 
desire to noise it abroad. “ And, besides, what would Sir Charles 
West say if he knew that the subject interested you so deeply?” 

Jane blushed, but she answered very simply— 

“ 1 have known Fred all my life. Sir Charles West is little better 
than a stranger to me yet.” 

Again Miss Beauclerk searched the modest face with her brilliant 
hazel eyes. 


CHERBY. 


n 


“ Bat you are engaged to liim?” she said, some new interest be- 
coming apparent in her tone. 

“Yes ” — smothering a sigli~“ 1 am engaged to him, ot course, 
and he is very— kind. He is coming down next week, papa, says, 
so you will see him, Miss Beauclerk. Every one says he is very 
handsome.” 

Frances broke into a little laugh. 

“ Kind, handsome— and a baronet!” she exclaimed gayly. 
“ Really, Miss Fordyce, 1 can not help wondering more and more 
at your interest in poor Mr. Hale, who appears to me a very com- 
monplace young man, indeed.” 

Miss Beauclerk very rarely permitted herself to converse on such 
personal matters w T ith her pupils, but it seemed that something in 
poor Jane’s face had struck her, and for once she broke her rule. 
Jane colored more deeply still now. 

“ When you care for people they never seem commonplace, 1 
think,” she said wistfully. “ And Fred and 1 have grown up to- 
gether, you know, Miss Beauclerk. However ’’—sighing— “ 1 am 
engaged, as you say, and 1 suppose 1 ought not to take much notice 
of what he says or does, any more. 1 suppose there is no help 
for it.” 

“No help for your engagement?” — smiling. “ I hope that you 
would not help it it you could. You are too sensible, surely, to 
think of such a thing?” 

“ 1 suppose 1 am!” — sighing again— and Miss Beauclerk, having 
buttoned her gloves at last, took her leave, a little flush adding new 
brilliancy to her looks. 

A tew days later Sir Charles West arrived at the house in the 
Crescent, with his kind, fussy old mother, and his appearance in 
Low ford formed the second of the two occurrences which have been 
mentioned as having broken the monotony of the Beauclerks’ life. 
For it really had Beemed, for a time, as if Frances were likely to 
have her revenge upon her recreant suitor, Lord Wastelands, by 
reappearing in the London world in all the splendor of her matured 
beauty, and as the wife ot another man who, also, could make her 
“my lady,” and who came of a far older family than the Waste- 
lands, whose grandfather had, as everybody knew, been a pawn 
broker. 

Sir Charles West, it was said, had been influenced in his proposal 
to Miss Fordyce by motives ot prudence; and, indeed, poor little 
Jane, nice and sweet as she was, was hardly the girl to take the 
fancy of a young man about town in his second season. The match, 


CHEMiY. 


ia 


in fact, had been ai ranged by Lady West and old Fordyce, who, 
being a self-made man, was naturally anxious to ally his daughter 
with blood rather than with money— of which he had enough to 
satisfy the most exacting of fond mothers. 

And Lady West was as fond as she was exacting. Her boy was 
the best boy in the world, she had assured Mr. Fordyce, but he had 
been somewhat more extravagant than could be wished, and had 
had losses, and got into debt, -and— to sum it all up— it was desira- 
ble, to say the least, that he should marry money. Mr. Fordyce, 
on the other hand, the lady supposed, with a frank smile, would 
like his charming little daughter to make a brilliant match and a 
figure in society* 

And so little Jane found herself “ taken up ” with much energy 
by Lady West, who was never weary of urging upon her son the 
advantages which would arise from a marriage with the shy young 
heiress. After a good deal of half-laughing, halt- serious protest 
from Sir Charles, the young man did at last propose in due form to 
old Fordyce’s daughter, and Jane, when the London season was 
over, went back to Lowford engaged to a baronel, and was much 
looked up to- in consequence by her younger sisters, and by her fe- 
male acquaintances in general. 

Tnen came Sir Charles’s first visit to the fluttered family in the 
Crescent, and his introduction, accidentally one morning, to Fran- 
ces Beauclerk. 

The young man was certainly very much struck with the hand- 
some and stately young governess, who came every day to teach 
Jane’s little sifters; and he contrived to be present nearly always 
during the lessons which Jane herself still continued to take not- 
withstanding her promotion. 

Jane explained somewhat eagerly to her future husband that she 
went on with them by way of keeping up her practice. She did not 
add that Fred Hale’s sisters, too, were among Miss Beauclerk’s pu- 
pils; and that the music-lessons somehow appeared to lead to a 
good deal of running to and fro between the two houses, and to the 
delivery of many messages by young Hale himself. 

Jane was brave enough to have dared her father’s anger — and old 
Fordyce had a terrible temper— and to have refused Sir Charles 
West for the sake of her old friend and playfellow, if Fred had 
given her the least encouragement. But he did not. He had never 
said a word which could lead her to suppose that he renu mbered 
their boy-and-girl romance as she did, or that he felt aggrieved by 
the fact of her engagement. 

»•* » — '( -f T-" 


14 


CHERRY. 


But then came Frances’s refusal of poor Fred’s suit, and the 
young man’s very apparent low spirits. Silly little Jane never 
dreamt that liei governess, handsome as she was, could have been 
the attraction which drew young Hale so olten to the Crescent. She 
only observed that Fred’s dejection became visible at the very time 
when Sir Charles West’s first visit had been announced, and she 
drew her own tender and mistaken little conclusions from that. tact. 

How could she imagine that the foolish young man was breaking 
his heart and losing his rest for Miss Beauclerk, who seemed so dig- 
nified, and so— so old? Frances was then, in fact, nearly twenty- 
five, and poor Fred a year or two younger. And, if it seemed some- 
what puzzling that young Hale should, as soon as Sir Charles 
arrived, begin to tall back into his old habits of running in to the 
Crescent, Jane did not doubt that it was jealousy which prompted 
these frequent visits. 

It is probable that Frances had bestowed a few relenting smiles 
on her youthful adorer just then. On one or two occasions, when 
both the young men had come into the school- room during Jane’s 
music-lesson, Miss Beauclerk had found that Sir Charles had a good 
deal to say to her, while Jane, at a little distance, was- talking in a 
low voice to Fred. And the governess made Mr. Hale a graceful 
bow when it was time for her to go, and asked him gently why 
they never saw him now on music-lesson days. 

That was quite enough for poor Fred. It was something to be in 
the same room for an hour with his goddess, even if that baronet- 
fellow was always hanging about and paying Miss Beauclerk all 
sorts ot gay compliments. Of coarse, be meant nothing by them; 
he was engaged. But Fred was of opinion, &nd rightly, that Sir 
Charles West would have been better employed in making pretty 
speeches to his betrothed. 

Jane was not at all jealous; unaffected and nice as she was, to 
her Miss Beauclerk was only her governess— somebody who had 
the right to scold her, and who could play the piano much better 
than she, but who seemed the last woman in the world for any one 
to fall in lov r e with. 

And if, during those long, whispered talks with Fred, which Sir 
Charles’s presence in the school-room seemed to bring about so nat- 
urally, if during those talks poor Fred’s mysteiious allusions to an 
unnappy fate and unrequited affection .were meant for stately Fran- 
ces, who was smiling up at the young baronet, and not for his old 
friend and favorite, Jane, little Jane, was not to know this, but, on 


CHERRY. 


15 


the contrary, believed that the words were a veiled reproach to her- 
self. 

And the poor child fell into a habit of sobbing herself to sleep 
every night, and could hardly be compelled by her relatives, or by 
Lady West, to feign a decent interest in her trousseau. 

So the days went by, and Sir Charles found that he was amusing 
himself very well indeed in Lowford. It was by his skillful maneu- 
vering that Miss Beauclerk and her brother received a card for the 
grand dinner that was given at “ the Ciescent,” as every one called 
old Foid} r ce’s house, though it was only one of a dozen in that dull 
and respectable street. 

No one took much notice of poor Henry, a sad looking young 
man, clumsy and plain, and wearing the old-fashioned dress clothes 
that had evidently been made before he had done growing. Hut 
Miss Beauclerk looked brilliant ; she had made herself a charming 
gown of some cheap stutl— just suited to her station, as every one 
admitted— in which she outshone most of the provincial young 
ladies present. 

Sir Charles West told her so distinctly more than once, and de- 
voted himself in so marked a way to the handsome governess that 
Frances went home that night with a bright spot burning in each 
cheek, and eyes blazing with excitement. 

“ It matters could be arranged,” she thought eagerly, as she sat 
up in her own roam till the daylight came stealing through the 
leaves. “ Why should not poor Jane Fordvce marry her old love? 
She has money enough for them both, and then — Sir Charles 
W 7 est is poor, perhaps, for a man in his position; but he comes of 
an ancient family, and with economy — ” 

But, before many weeks were over, Miss Fordvce became Lady 
West. Sir Charles had meant nothing by his philandering, it was 
(piite clear; and Frances’s smiles and Jane’s tears had all been in 
vain. 

“ Y r ou will tell Fred, when 1 am gone, that 1 could not help my. 
self,” sobbed the little bride in Miss Beauclerk’s ear. It was the 
evening before the marriage, and she had taken Frances upstairs to 
show her the wedding- gown. “ 1 know he is unhappy, but if — if 
he would not speak out, what was 1 to do? How could 1 speak to 
papa?’* 

“I do not think Mr. Hale will mind very much,” returned 
Frances coolly, “lam sorry to say that I had to refuse him yes- 
terday for the second time.” 

It was her one piece of revenge; that, and her composed and smil- 


16 


CHERRY. 


ing face in the church on the morning of the marriage. Sir Charles 
could not help admiring her pluck and her beauty. 

“ But what is a poor beggar to do,” he thought ruefully, “ when 
a handsome woman gets a wrong notion into her head? She must 
have known 1 could not afford to marry for love, even if 1 had been 
guilty of that spoony sentiment toward her. Miss Beauclerk is very 
good fun to talk to; and a girl who has run the gantlet of two or 
three London seasons ought to have learned not to take every little 
thing a fellow says an grand serieux! How she holds up her 
head! By George, she was bom to be a duchess at the very least!” 

And so Sir Charles and Lady West drove away from the Crescent 
in a shower of satin slippers, and went to spend their honey-moon 
in Rome. 

It was one of old Fordyce’s stipulations— the manufacturer was 
very proud of his son-in-law, the baronet, and delighted in hearing 
his daughter called Lady West— that three months in the year 
should be regularly passed by the young couple at his house in 
Lowford. And, after the birth of a little girl, the only living child 
of the marriage, he clung more persistently than ever to the fulfill- 
ment of this condition. Sii Charles, while keeping within the let- 
ter of his contract, contrived to evade much of the dreary annual 
visit by repeated calls to Paris or London during the stated term— 
of course, on business. But Jane, who bore her honors very mod- 
estly, was glad to come home with her little daughter, whom Sir 
Charles called “ Pussums,” but who in her grandfather’s house 
flourished under her real name of Clementina, which had also been 
her grandmother’s. 

Fred Hale had by that time set up in business for himself, and was 
already in love again, .lane felt an embarrassment in meeting him; 
she knew now how mistaken she had been as to the stato of his feel- 
ings for her, and she was, besides, if the truth must be told, ex- , 
tremely happy in her new r home, with a kind young husbaud, who 
had grown very fond of his sweet little wife, and with her pretty 
Pussums, who was the very image of that husband. 

Poor Jane’s happiness was not to last very long. When little 
Clementina was only three years old, her mother died in giving 
birth to a son. Young Lady West aud her baby- boy were buried 
together, and then it was Sir Charles’s mother who came with Pus- 
sums every year to spend the prescribed three months at the Cres- 
cent. 

After the death of his young wife, Sir Charles West himself 
came much oftener to Lowford, being unable to endure a long 


CHERRY. 


17 


separation from his little daughter, to whom he was passionately 
attached, and who grew more winning in his eyes every year. Miss 
Beauclerk often saw him in church, or in the street. She never 
went to the house in tiie Crescent now. Time was passing. The 
pupils she had taught weie grown up, and married; while she and 
her brother still lived in their old red- brick house, almost forgetting 
to wish for a change. r 

How many times had the lilacs budded and bloomed and faded 
since that first spring, wlien she had put bits of the blossom in the 
belt of her mourning-gown? And how many winter nights had 
the old lamp that swung in the gateway been lighted, and cast its 
shadow on the flags, and glimmered dimly across her bedroom win- 
dow, and in the branches of the old trees overhead? How many 
years was it since Lord Wastelands had left her; since her father 
lay, staring dreadfully upward, on the library floor; since William 
Vanbrugh weni away to New Zealand? Sixteen— seventeen— eigh- 
teen. 

Miss Beauclerk flung William Vanbrugh’s letter down upon the 
table, as if she had been stung, and walked back with a kind of 
fierce appeal to the narrow strip of looking-glass. 

W as it— could it really be— eighteen years ago? Had she indeed 
left youth and all its dreams and possibilities so far behind? She 
looked ai herself again. There were the masses of fair hair, the 
large hazel eyes, the little proud nose and arched mouth, that had 
won her the title of a beauty at her first ball. There was the lithe 
upright shape, which her cheap well-fitting gown displayed to per- 
fection, though there was no one to see it but Henry. 

“ W T hen a woman is married she is still young at five-and-thirty,” 
Frances Beauclerk said to herself, with a 3uperb movement of her 
small head. “ And 1 am still young, though I am single. I do not 
look my age in spite of all 1 have gone through. What man seeing 
me to-day for the fiist time would dare to call me ‘ an old maid ’? 
No! William Vanbrugh has come back, and he will not find me so 
greatly changed, though it is eighteen years since he went away.” 

She bit her lips to redden them, and smiled deliberately into the 
dingy glass. 

“ How do you do, Mr. Vanbrugh?” she said, under her hreatn, 
rehearsing the meeting with her old lover. “ 1 am glad to see you 
in England again; it seems only the other day you went away!” 

The animated face she saw nodding back at her, and arching its 
white throat, did certainly warrant the flush of satisfaction that rose 
to Miss Beauclerk’s cheek at sight of it. With the aid of a little 


18 


CHERRY. 


dress, a little trouble, she felt that she was still capable of looking 
no more than twenty-eight. She had had her own share of 
troubles, it was true, but they had not been the wearing, aging 
troubles of women with husbands and children to drag them down 
and make them old before their time. 

“ There are compensations in life, after all,” she thought, still 
flushed with the excitement of that last look in the mirror. “ The 
women who married at the time when my engagement with Waste- 
lands was broken off are settling down now into middle-aged 
dowdies, and letting their figures go to rack and ruin. They have 
had their life but mine is still to come!” Miss Beauclerk turned 
from the mantel-piece and began to walk about the room, beating the 
palm of one hand against the back of the other. ”1 have never 
been so poor, or so unhappy, that I have forgotten that; or ceased 
to believe in my future, or failed to take good care of my health 
and my looks. Wasn’t it Dejazet, the actress, who used to say that 
it was a pity we did not come into the world old, and grow young, 
so as to have time to make an ample provision for our best days? 
That is what 1 have done! I am younger to-day in many ways than 
when William Vanbrugh went away. I have my youth yet to spend. 
And now— now he is coming back! He has not iound it possible 
to forget me, in spite of his long silence. And 1 too, have I not 
remembered him?” 

It seemed to Frances Beauclerk now, in the first glow of her new 
hope, that she had been mourning tor Will Vanbrugh ever since he 
went away. She forgot the engagement into which she had entered 
a year after he sailed; she forgot her dreams, later, of becoming 
Lady West; she remembered only that he had written, that he must 
love her still, that his return to England opened up to her the pros- 
pect of a release from this monotonous genteel poverty in which 
she and her brother were bound as if with chains; of her yet living 
a woman’s life to the full, and of being lifted again to the level of 
those who had abandoned and looked down upon her. Of course 
William had made money. What do young men go to such places 
as INew Zealand for, except to make their fortune? 

The door opened, and her brother came in. His hair was rough, 
his eyes looked tired, as if he had hardly slept at all. Frances ran 
to meet him, smiling and flushing like a girl. 

“ Oh, Henry,” she cried, “ there is a letter for you! From whom 
do .you suppose? You will never guess, 1 am sure!” 

Henry smiled absently, and went over to take his place at the 
table, having put his hands first on his sister’s shoulders, and 


CHERRY. 


19 


kissed her on the forehead. He did not notice the letter by his 
plate, but took up the newspaper instead. 

“ 01), Henry-look at your letter first!” flashed out Frances, not 
without indignation at his indifference. “ It. is from William Van- 
brugh! He has come home— he is in England!” 

“ William Van rugh?” repeated Henry, evidently puzzled. 

He looked blankly at his sister’s moved and sparkling face. 
Frances made a little gesture and sound of patient impatience. 
Henry was apt, at times, she knew, to forget the people he had 
met, and the events that had occurred befoie— before that foolish 
affair of his with little Melissa Garth. 

“ William Vanbrugh, who was in papa’s office, ” she explained, 
with an evident determination to be calm; “ and who went away to 
New Zealand when 1 refused him— don’t you remember?” 

“ Yes, to be sure!” cried Henry, kindly enough now. “ And he 
has come back, you say? Why, Frances, he has been faithful, in- 
deed, after all these years!” 

“ 1 don’t know.” Her face changed. “The letter is lor you, 
Henry. Here it is— see!” She took it up, and put it into his hand, 
and pulled away the newspaper with a smile. “ While you read it, 
I will pour out your tea.” 

As she did so, she kept her eyes eagerly fixed upon her brother’s 
face. She helped him to the simple dishes on the table; and then, 
unable herself to touch anything, she pushed her plate aw T ay, that 
she might lean forward on her arms, and await the confirmation of 
her hopes with as much patience as she could command. 

Outside was the silent sunny court, with its cool shadows and 
fluttering leaves. Some one passed along the flags and through the 
gate, which fell to with a clang; sparrows w r ere chirping and twit- 
tering on the sill of the open window; there was a smell of flower- 
ing lilacs in the air. Inside w T as the prim little room, with its spin- 
dle-legged chairs and tables, its faint suggestions of pot-pourri, its 
engravings of Princess Charlotte, and poor, heavy -looking Henry, 
spelling out his letter with a great frown over his shaggy eyebrows. 

“ Well?” Frances said breathlessly, as lie turned over the last 
page, and she saw his eyes traveling slowiy downward. “ Well, 
what docs he say?” 

flenry Beauclerk finished the letter to the last word, then turned 
it slowly over, as if seeking some line further. There was nothing; 
and he laid it down, keeping his hand on it, and looking absently 
out of the window. 

“ I don’t know what you will think of it,” he said at last, with- 


< H EKRY. 


20 

out lurning liis eyes on his sister. “ He -lie does not speak of you 
at all, Frances.” 

A chill ran through her veins; all the transient color and buoy- 
ancy faded from her face. 

“ Then what does he write about, pray?” she demanded curtly. 

“ About his daughter!” 

Frances drew hers* If up at the abrupt words as if he had offered 
her a personal affront. 

“ His daughter?” she repeated. “ William Vanbrugh's daugh- 
ter?” 

“ Yes. He tells me that he married within three months of his 
landing at Dunedin, and That he has a daughter sixteen years old. 
His wife has been dead for many years.” 

The woman staited up, trembling all over, and held out her hand 
for the letter. ’While she had been remembering William Van- 
brugh, she wildly thought, and repenting of her cruelty to him, he 
had forgotten her within three months, and had married, and had a 
child born to him. And nov T , instead ot the returning lover she 
had expected at sight of his letter, there wms only this careless con- 
fession of his infidelity; not a word for her— not an allusion to the 
past. 

The revulsion of feeling was too great, too sudden- and for once 
in her life Frances Beauclerk broke down, and burst into a passion 
of bitter sobs and weeping. 

Henry looked up startled. 

“ i—i did not know you would care so much, Frances,” he stam- 
mered, not unkindly. He was, in truth, unaccustomed to any dis- 
play of feeling on his sister’s part. “ And perhaps he is— perhaps 
he still cares tor you. But he talks only of his little girl; he says 
that he means to bring her to see us. He has had some trouble in 
finding us out, or they would have been here sooner.” 

Miss Beauclerk was already controlling her tears, and her face; 
only the trembling of her hand3, now, showed how much she had 
been moved. 

“1 am very absurd,” she said, resolutely drying her eyes, and 
forcing her pale lips into a smile. “ You took me a little by sur- 
prise, that is all, and 1 believe 1 was always rather sorry for Will- 
iam Vanbrugh. Go on, Henry. What about his daughter? What 
can lie have to say to you about her, praj r ?” 

“ He wants us to take care of her, when he goes back Netv 
Zealand,” answered Henry, puzzled. ‘‘ He does not know what a 
dull home this would be for a child of sixteen! 


CHERRY. 


21 


Miss Beauclerk’s flue lips grew compressed. 

“ That is hardly the point,” she said, completely mistress of her- 
self once more. “And pray by what right does Mr. Vaubrugn 
make such an unheard-of request? Why should we, of all people 
in the world, be expected to assume so unwelcome a responsibility 
as the charge of his child?” 

“ Perhaps you had better read the letter,” suggested Henry, with 
a sigh. He did not care to enter into any argument with his sister. 
“ He tells me that lie will explain things more fully when he sees 
me — that he is compelled to go back for a few months to wind up 
his affairs, and that as he will be traveling about — 3 r ou see — ” Poor 
Henry was stammering more and more. “ He knows no one else 
that he can appeal to, and — and I suppose he thought you would 
feel kindly toward his daughter for the sake of old times. If you 
had accepted poor Will, Frances, you might have had a little girl 
like her by this time. ” 

The blood rushed to Frances’s face. 

44 1 did not accept Mr. Vanbrugh,” she said curtly. 

44 No; but—” 

44 You will write a line before you go to I he office,” decided his 
sister, puttingaside all remonstrance with a wave of her white hand. 
44 ^ou will remind Mr. Vanbrugh of the change in our circum- 
stances; he is evidently aware of it, or he could not have addressed 
his letter here — and you will decline in my name and your own the 
preposterous charge he seeks to impose upon us. It is certainly 
the coolest proceeding of which 1 have ever heard.” 

44 Very well,” Henry answered indifferently. 

He was thinking of the times when he and 'William Vanbrugh 
were lads together, and rowed in his boat on the Thames; and of 
how poor old Will used to rave about Frances and her beauty and 
girlish cruelty. Will was cured of his pain now, and had his heart 
full of another love; and — he— Henry— was only a dull middle- 
aged man, having no one to care for and nothing to live for but the 
necessity of eating and being clothed. How strange and sad a 
thing life was! 

44 Write in a way that will end the correspondence,” said his sis- 
ter calmly. 44 1 have no desire, in the circumstances, to renew our 
acquaintance with Mr. Vanbrugh.” 

44 If you do not care to let him come and see us, 1 can at least go 
and see him,” Henry answered, with some bitterness. 44 We were 
friends once; it is not a great deal to do for him.” 

44 Traveling costs money,” replied Frances calmly. 44 My dear 


CHERRY. 


Henry, don’t be sentimental, 1 beg of you. You had forgotten 
William Vanbrugh’s very existence until 1 recalled it to you this 
morning. Pray don’t make your old friendship an excuse for a 
few days’ absence from the office.” 

Henry colored darkly; and, witkoul another word, sat down to 
write his letter. Frances rose too. She had her lessons to give 
presently. She was not one to allow her private feelings to inter- ( 
fere with business. Her handsome face had quite recovered its ^ 
usual tranquillity. The future she so steadily believed in was again 
deferred— that was all. But with this thought was mingled a bitter 
sense of resentment against the man who had so soon forgotten 
her. She was vexed with herself for having: wasted an hour over 
such unprofitable anticipations concerning a man who was hence- 
forth no more to her than that other unknown William Vanbrugh 
whose name she had read last night among the list of the injured 
passengers by the Western express. 

“ It was not even worth his while,” she said to herself angrily, 
“ to send me a word of remembrance in his letter.” 

She paused as she was about to leave the room, and took up the 
letter which her brother had left by his plate. The handwriting 
was firm and bold enough, and showed none of those traces of agi- 
tation which had disfigured poor Will’s last hurried scrawl from 
Liverpool. 

44 1 want you to see my little girl, Henry, old fellow,” was the 
unlucky passage her eye fell upom “ Cherry and 1 have been wait- 
ing till she was done with school for good to come home and see 
the old country together, and the old friends. Cherry and 1 have 
heard with regret, my dear Henry, of the change iu your fortunes. 
We should be very glad if we could in any way pay our debt of 
gratitude to the son of the man who was good to me when 1 was a 
lad beginning the world. Cherry sends you her love. Now that T. 
have got her back again, and see how sweet and good and pretty 
she is, I think it was great waste of time to send her to school. 
Cherry says — ” 

Cherry, Cherry— nothing but Cherry! Miss Beauclerk laid the 
letter down again, and her fine lips were scornfully curved. 

“ Have you finished the answer?” she asked of her brother, ris- 
iug and going to the glass to smooth her hair and lo see whether the 
traces of her unwonted emotion were dying away; and she went on 
unmoved, hearing the parlor-door open. ‘‘Yes, Susan, you may 
take away the breakfast things, and don’t forget to tell me when the 
butcher comes.” 

There was no answer; and Frances, looking round with quick 


CHERRY. 


23 


displeasure, saw that it was not Susan who had come into the room, 
but a girl dressed in black, wlio looked at her with startled dark 
eyes. 

“ Are you Miss Beauclerk?” she asked 0 

Frances bowed. A certain unwelcome conviction blanched her 
cheeks as she saw the sweet little frightened face under Ike country 
bonnet. 

“You don’t expect me, 1 know,” faltered the child; “ but 1 had 
to come; papa made me promise. 1 am Cherry Vanbrugh;” and 
she burst into tears. 

Henry Beauclerk sprung up from his unwritten letter and ad- 
vanced with shy and clumsy cordiality. 

“Are you Will’s daughter?” he said, holding out both his 
hands; and little Miss Vanbrugh, looking up at the young man’s 
ugly compassionate face, held out both of hers too, and begun to 
cry afresh as she felt the kiudly pressure of his big palms. 

“ How do you do?” Frances said with chilly politeness. “ Pray 
sit down. Have you had breakfast?” 

But Cherry, unheeding her, continued to sob and to cling to 
Henry’s hands. The poor fellow felt thrilled and touched by the 
little trembling fingers. Something in the girl’s face and slender 
shape reminded him vaguely of his gentle lost sweetheart. He 
drew her closer and muttered some stammering words of consola- 
tion. 

Miss Beauclerk watched them both with coldly angered eyes. It 
was not William Vanbrugh’s daughter she saw— not the child of 
the man who had once loved her better than all the world, but the 
personification of tlie many years that had elapsed since their part- 
ing, of her own unwedded maturity, of the futile dreams which had 
known no fulfillment, of the latest bitterest disappointment she bad 
just endured. Frances was conscious of a slowly-awakening hatred 
as she looked at the pretty sobbing maiden and watched her brother’s 
kindly but uncouth attempts at comforting her. Then suddenly she 
became aware of the child’s black frock, and a chill suspicion of 
the truth darted across her, shaking her for the moment out of her 
invuluerable armor of selfishness. 

“ Mr. Vanbrugh— your father!” she cried hurriedly. “ He is 
with you, of course?’’ 

Cherry drew her hands quickly atvay from Henry’s kind grasp, 
and turned to look at her questioner out of her dark and agonized 
eyes. 

“ Papa is dead!” she cried, with a fresh hurst of grief. “ Did a i 


24 


CHERRY. 


you know— haven’t you heard ot that terrible night in the train? 
Do you think 1 would have left him if he were alive?” And, as she 
spoke, she fell sobbing by a chair, and buried her face on her arm. 


CHAPTER 111. 

In her heart ot hearts, Frances Beauclerk, having recovered from 
the first painful surprise, told herselt that William Vanbrugh de- 
served his fate. She was not very wicked; she was only very cold 
and very self-absorbed, and it did not seem unnatural or unlikely 
in her mind that he should be thus punished for his want ot faith 
with her. 

Her eyes were glittering coldly when, at last, little Cherry lifted 
up her tear-drenched face and looked round wistfully for poor old 
Henry. Miss Beauclerk felt that there was no time to be lost. 

“ My brother is obliged to go to the office in a few moments,” 
she began, not unkindly. “ Perhaps, Miss Vanbrugh, you will tell 
us the motive of your visit? Can we be of any service to you?” 

Cherry looked at her with a wide, terror stricken gaze. 

“ 1 — I came to stay,” she faltered. “ Papa made me promise 
with his last breath — ” 

She did not cry now. Miss Beauclerk's bright hazel eyes were 
upon her, and her tears seemed irozen. 

“To stay!” Frances echoed, drawing herself up. “My dear 
Henry, it will be as well perhaps if you attend to what Miss Van- 
brugh is saying.” 

Henry had moved away, and taken up his hat, which he was 
turning round and round and polishing with much care against his 
coat-sleeve. 

“ It will, of course, be necessary for us to communicate at once 
with her friends. ” 

“ 1 have no friends!” Cherry declared piteously, as Mr. Beau- 
clerk, with his usual obedience to his sister’s hints, stopped polish- 
ing his hat and advanced. “ Papa told me 1 was to live with you 
now. Didn’t you get his letter? 1 ’’—the poor little lips were 
quivering again—” I posted it as soon as I tound it among his 
papers, and then — when— when they look him away and 1 was left 
quite alone, the doctor and the clergyman told me that 1 had better 
come at once — and 1 did, though X had never traveled by myself be- 
fore. and I was f lightened,” 


CHERRY. 


Henry’s lips parted eagerly, but a look from his sister silenced 
him before he could well speak. 

“ You won’t send me away?” the little creature urged, pale with 
dread. ” 1 am never any trouble; papa says so. And the clergy- 
man told me that 1 would have enough money to live on and buy 
clothes with, so 1 need not be any expense, need 1? Oh, Miss 
Beauelerk, your brother was my darling papa’s friend; he often 
spoKe of him to me. Don’t send me away — please don’t!” She 
clasped her soft little hands. “ I will be a good girl and do what 
ever you tell me.” 

Miss Beaulcerk made an impatient gesture. 

‘‘ This is hardly the moment for sentiment,” she said quickly. 
“ My brother and 1, Miss Yanburgh, are hard-w orking people, and 
have presently to go out to attend to our respective duties. Let us 
understand this clearly. Have you no friends or relations at all in 
England — no one to whom we can write, and who can receive you 
into their house?” 

“ No. ” Cherry shook her head. “ Papa and I tried to find some 
one that he knew, but they were all dead or gone away. Hardly 
any one remembered him in Norfield, where he was born — none of 
his relations lived there any longer. We saw the names of some of 
them in the church-yard.” 

The dark and childish eyes were filling up again. Henry pushed 
over an arm-chair, in which Le made her sit. Her little shape in 
its mourning-dress seemed swallowed up by the big arms as she sat 
nervously clasping and unclasping her hands and looking into the 
faces of the two strangers, who were her only friends in the whole 
world. 

‘‘Your father had surely corresponded with his family?” pur- 
sued Frances, unflinching in her investigation, 

“ They would not write to papa after his marriage, because ” — 
the girl hung her head a little — “ because mammawas a house-maid, 
Miss Beauelerk.” 

“ A house maid?” The lady’s clear cut lips began to curl again. 

“ Yes. She nursed papa in New r Zealand when he had brain 
fever, and then they were married. 1 can not remember my moth- 
er, Miss Beaulcenc; but papa said that she was very sweet and 
good, though she was not born a lady. But papa’s friends never 
forgave him, and they would never speak to me or let me go and 
see them; and now it is too late.” 

“ Your mother’s relations, then?” demanded Miss Beauelerk, 
With her brilliant wintery smile. It was not displeasing to her to 


20 


CHERRY. 


hear what maimer of woman her discarded lover had married m his 
despair. 

Cheiry blushed and hung her head again. 

“ We could only find one,” she faltered out— ‘ my rnolher s 
brother. He keeps— a shop in London; but he has a great many 
children ot his own, and is very poor. Papa would not take me to 
see him at all— not because he was poor— oh, no! Neither papa nor 
1 would have minded that. Papa was once very poor himself; but 
—but because 1 had been to school and learned many things that 
my poor cousins did not know, and papa thought it would only be 
unpleasant for all of us to meet. 

There was truth in every look of Cherry s dark eyes, and in 
every tone of her pretty anxious voice as she pleaded her cause. 

“That may have been so,” Frances replied, unmoved, when 
your father was alive, and you had a natural protector. But now 
that you are alone in the world, surely your mother’s relations are 
the proper people to receive you, 1 lliink, my dear Miss "Van- 
brugh, that you had better give me your relative’s address, and 
allow us to communicate with him. Until we hear from him we 
shall, of course, do our best to make you comfortable here. But—” 

“ 1 am sorry,” Cherry said, in a distressed whisper. " But 1 can 
not give you my uncle’s address.” 

•* You do not know it? Doubtless Mr. Vanbrugh’s lawyer-” 

“ It is not that. I do know,” admitted the girl, twisting her 
helpless little hands in her lap. ” But papa desired, me not to go. 
How can 1 disobey him now that he is 

A fresh burst ot sobbing finished the question, as Cherry hid her 
face in her hands, and rocked herself in uncontrollable agitation. 
Miss Beauclerk sat down, and waited, with a slightly irritated ex- 
pression, until quiet was restored. 

Heniy had started and turned pale at sight of the child s grief, 
but he offered no further consolation, as he stood clumsily shifting 
from one foot to the other, and watching the two women from 
under his shaggy eyebrows. 

“ In other circumstances,” his sister began, “ 1 do not deny that 
you would act sensibly in remembering your father’s wishes. But 
as it is ’ ’—shrugging her stately shoulders—” 1 ask you if you are 
justified in making any objection to the plan 1 suggest? My broth- 
er was about to write and explain how impossible it would be for 
us, in our quiet little household, to receive a stranger. X have no 

desire to appear impolite, but really—” 

“ \ see, ’ ’ Cherry said simply, her lip quivering with shame and 

> < } — 


CHERRY. 


27 


mortification. “ You do not want me. I am sorry, because papa 
died so happy, thinking that you would be good to me lor his sake. 
But ol course 1 can not stay now. I am sorry to have troubled 
you. 1 will not detain you any longer, but go back to Doviton, 
and consult Doctor Denbigh. ” 

The child rose as she spoke, with the prettiest air ol dignity. 
Her small dark head was about un to Miss Beauclerk’s shoulder. 

“Oh, pray do not make me out quite so ungracious as that!” 
replied Frances, smiling again. “1 hope that you will consider 
yourself our guest, lor to-day at least, if you will not allow us to 
communicate with your Iriends in London, you will at least consent 
to our writing to the doctor you mention, and making further in- 
quiries into the matter?” 

Cherry looked wistfully from Frances to her brother. There was 
a question in her dark sweet eyes as they met Henry’s. 

“ Stay,” he said abruptly, as if she had spoken it. “1 must go 
now. My sister will make you comfortable.” 

Henry w r as an hour later than usual, that evening, in coming 
home from the office. His sister’s face clouded over when dinner- 
time came, and he had not yet returned. 

“ Won’t you wait for Mr. Beauclerk?” Cherry asked timidly, 
from the open window, as Fiances prepared to take her seat and 
carve. 

“ I never wait dinner for any one,” was the composed answer. 
“ If Henry chooses to trifle with his digestion, 1 see no reason why 
we should suffer for his want ol common sense. Pray take that 
chair, Miss Vanbrugh; I hope you have not been very dull all day? 
Unfortunately it is impossible for me to put off my pupils. 1 have 
had a hard day’s work. 1 can assure you I have earned my din- 
ner.” 

Cherry hesitated. 

“ Would you mind,” she said wistfully; “ 1 am not very hungry 
— may 1 wait until Mr. Beauclerk comes home?” 

Frances stared a little. 

“ Certainly,” she said, with an amused air, “ if you prefer luke- 
warm mutton. Henry will be charmed, I have no doubt;” and she 
proceeded calmly to dine. 

Cherry blushed, but was glad to have gained her point so quietly. 
In truth she had spent a most wearisome and lonely day, sitting at 
the window’ in her new black gown, with saddest memories for her 
companions, and looking out into the melancholy sunny court, 


28 


CHERRY. 


where only the sparrows in the ivy and the slow footfall of some 
one opening and shutting the iron gate broke the April silence. 

She had found lierself watching, toward evening, with some eager- 
ness for Henry’s return. She could speak freely, she felt, to him. 
and teli him the many vague plans for the future that had teen 
drifting through her sad aching little head all day. And it seemed 
so hard to sit down and break bread for the first time under his roof 
without him. She had noi touched the luncheon they brought her 
during JMiss Beauclerk’s absence; and she began now to feel very 
faint, but she waited bravely. 

And, when Frances had left the room, the gill ventured timidly 
to readjust the table, and to set in its midst the huge nosegay of 
lilac and laburnum which kind Martha of the kitchen had brought 
her in from the grass-grown yard at the back of the house. 

When Henry came home, louking tired and dusty, but excited 
too, and having a certain air of determination about him, he found, 
not the disordered table and chilled meats that usually awaited him 
when ne was late, but Cherry, smiling shyly from behind her big 
bow-pot, and ready to dine with him oft the hot soup that came in 
smoking. 

“ Do you mind?” she asked, holding out her pretty hand. “ 1 
waited for you, 1 was not very hungry.” 

Poor Henry’s tired face brightened. 

“ 1 did not mean to be late,” he said. “ But now 1 am glad; it 
looks very pleasant, somehow Let me give you some soup. Miss 
Vanbrugh.” He upset some upon the clean cloth in his eagerness. 

“ Please call me Cherry,” said the child; and then Frances came 
rustling softly into the room. 

“ What has been the matter?” she asked brusquely. “ Is there 
anything wrong in Conyngham Lane?” 

“ l don’t know,” Henry answered as abruptly. “ 1 have not 

been to the office to-day.” 

Miss Beauclerk turned pale. 

“ Where, then, have you spent your time?” 

Henry finished his soup, then he said * 

“ 1 have been down to Doviton to see Doctor Denbigh.” 

“Oh!” cried Cherry „ dropping her spoon, and clasping her 

hands. 

Frances was silent. 

“ i pad a long talk with him,” Mr. Beauclerk went on. “ Poor 
Will had taken him, as well as he could, into his confidence at the 
last. And he agrees with ms that Miss Cherry will be safer and 


CHEEKY. 


29 


happier with us than with her relations in London. Besides, her 
father has appointed me her guardian.” 

Cherry uttered a faint cry of relief. Her dark sweet little face 
glowed gratefully out of the dusk. 

“ Am 1 not to be consulted then?” said Frances icily. She did 
not dare to assert her authority. She had seen the look on her 
brother's face; it was the same look that she had seen once before, __ 
and never forgotten. [ 

“ 1 don’t see that any consultation is necessary,” he replied. 

“ What good can it do? Everything is settled.” 

“ For the present, yes,” assented Miss Beauclerk. “ Pray finish 
your dinner, Henry; we will speak of this later.” 

“ There is nothing to be said,” he declared loudly, pushing away 
his plate and standing up, a clumsy, round-shouldered figure with 
gleaming eyes “ Don’t you understand, Frances, that this girl 
stays with us until she herself chooses to go away? Her father was 
my friend. It is our duty to look after her. And ’’—smiling bit- 
terly—” she can pay you for all the bread-and-butter she eats.” 

Frances began to tremble, and again she was conscious of a swift 
sharp pang of jealous hatred. 

” Miss Yanbrugh is well aware,” she said, “ that in our unfort- 
unate circumstances — ” 

But Henry broke in impatiently. 

“ What does that child care about our poverty?” he cried. 

'* When she finds a better home to go to, well and good; but until 
then she stays here. 1 won’t have any more faces haunting us in 
the evenings. It is enough to have broken one girl’s heart. I say 
I'll have no more of it!” 

The poor fellow' was plunging blindly up and down the small 
parlor in hi3 excitement, knocking his broad shoulders and clumsy 
feet against the furniture, and speaking in abrupt broken sentences. 
Frances had not a w r ord to say. She was indeed not a little fright- 
ened, and dreaded a repetition of the old escapade which, at the 
lime, had nearly cost her brother his position in the house of For- 
dyce Brothers. 

Little Cherry turned very white. 

“ Oh, pray don’t speak unkindly to your sister on my account!” 
she pieaded, getting up and going over to poor Henry. ” 1 will go 
away to-morrow if Uncle David will have me. Perhaps papa won’t 
know where 1 am, and won’t tret about it. It would be belter for 
me to go than to cause any unhappiness in your home.” 

‘‘You are hot to go. Have not 1 said so?” cried Heory, stop- 


30 


CHERRY. 


ping in his stormy career to look at the child with the kind and mel- 
ancholy eyes that little Melissa had found so sweet. “ Frances, tell 
Miss Vanbrugh that she is very welcome.” 

“ Pray stay with us, since it is better so,” said Frances, pale- 
lipped. 

And then Henry, having trodden upon the cat and knocked over 
a chair, went out of the room and appeared no more that evening. 
Cherry ran to his sister. 

“ Forgive me for coming here,” she said, choking back her sobs. 
” How was 1 to know? 1 am very sorry. 1 will go away yet. 
You must talk him over.” 

“ No,” Miss Beauclerk said. ” If you went away he would only 
follow you. He has got into one of his obstinate fits. Stay with 
us; we are very stupid people, and you will very soon tiie of our 
life, but I suppose it can not be helped.” 

And Cherry did stay. And the lawyers paid every quarter a cer- 
tain sum tor her expenses to the Beauelerks; for it turned out that 
William Vanbrugh had left his daughter a little money, though he 
had evidently not succeeded in finding the “ fortune ” he had gone 
to seek in New Zealand eighteen years ago. 

One evening, when Cherry had been living in Eden Row for a 
year, she went for a long walk with Henry, and came back with 
her hands full of primroses from the lanes outside the town. On 
their way home they passed through the Crescent, and saw Lady 
West’s carriage standing at the door of Mr. Fordyce’s" house, and 
Lady West herself, who came out presently in a train and diamonds 
and a white shawl, to drive away to some dinner-party. 

Henry told Cherry who thp lady was, and how her son was a 
widower with one daughter, and how they always spent three 
months out of every year in Lowford. Cherry was staring up at the 
stars, and hardly heard him. 

* Oh, Henry,” she said, “ the sky is just the color of my prim- 
roses I” And they walked on together to the simple supper that 
awaited them. 

They were great friends now, and could always find a great deal 
to say to each other, though when Frances came into the room the 
talking would cease, and Henry would relapse into his usual moody 
way He had found courage by some means to tell Cherry about 
poor little Melissa and her early grave away in Manchester. Cherry 
listened and pitied him with all her heart. The poor fellow felt 
soothed by having some one to look up to and admire him again, in 


CHERRY. 


31 


spite of his uncouth manner and ugly looks. Indeed Cherry had 
made him very happy. He was reading German with her in the 
evenings when the weather kept them in-doors. The girl had, with 
old Martha’s help, cleared out a room that had been filled with 
lumber and odds and ends, and had made it into a splendid study 
for Mr. Beauclerk. He could sit and smoke there, and scrape away 
at his beloved violin unheard by Frances, who could not endure the 
sound; whereas Cherry grew very fond of the bits of melody in De 
Beriot’s exercises, and would sing them softly to herself as Henry 
swung her in the swing he had put up for her between the two old 
elm -trees in the yard 

The girl’s dark hair floated on the breeze, her eyes shone, her 
cool muslin skirts flew backward and forward above her trim little 
shoes. Henry would never have stopped swinging her. It was she 
who used to remember that he must be tired, and beg him gently to 
rest. She had not many amusements besides her swing and her 
German lessons, only Martha’s cat, and a few pots of flowers that 
she had bought one day from a man who was wheeling a barrow 
full of them through the court. r lhe room smelled sweetly of 
Cherry’s violets and lilies of the valley as Henry and she came back 
from their walk. 

“ Oh, Frances,” she said gayly, “ we saw Lady West going out 
to a dinner-pa rty! She looked so grand! 1 have never been to a 
dinner-party; 1 wonder what it is like?” And she gave all sorts of 
fine names to the bread and cheese as Henry helped her at supper, 
and called the beer champagne, which only Mr. Beauclerk indulged 
in. 

That was not to be the last, however, which she was to see of 
Lady West. The very next day it happened that she was waiting 
on the step of a shop for Miss Beauclerk, who was giving her care- 
iul orders inside. The sun was shining, and a soft little wind blow - 1 
ing, and Cherry was humming vaguely to herself, as she stood 
against a variegated background of lettuces and tomatoes and I 
radishes, full to the very finger-tips of the enjoyment of her young 
blood and the brightness of the day. 

She had no idea how charming she looked in her pinkand-wliite 
muslin gown and fichu, and her coarse straw hat lined with pink 
and trimmed with dog-daisies. Lady West was looking at her very 
admiringly, having just driven up to the door with Pussums and 
Pussums’s doll and Skye terrier in the roomy old carriage. Miss 
Clementina’s blonde locks were streaming over her gay French-look- 
ing little garments, her eager eyes went looking up and down the 


32 CHERRY. 

street in search of amusement, and so they happened to meet 
Cherry’s, which smiled frankly hack at them. 

“ Pretty girl, please come and look at my doll, ,, cried Pussums, 
in her clear little pipe. “ Come and scratch Fluffs ears; he won’t 
bite.” 

Cherry smiled and nodded from her step, as the little girl leaned 
over the carriage door, dragging the reluctant terrier up so as to 
show his impertinent black nose and the falling fleece that hid his 
eyes. 

‘‘ My darling!” remonstrated Lady West, to whom the dapper 
shopman was bowing from the pavement. But Pussums renewed 
her invitation in a still louder key. 

“ Pretty girl,” she cried again, “ come and kiss me!” 

Cherry laughed then, and with great simplicity ran across to the 
carriage door, where she kissed the child a great many times, re- 
gardless of Fluff’s excited barking. 

A lmost at the same moment Frances appeared, cool and dignified, 
purse in hand, from the interior of the shop. No one would have 
guessed, from her appearance, how small the order was for which 
she had just paid. Her face darkened with quick annoyance as 
she saw the little scene before her— Cherry and Pussums kissing 
each other over the carriage door, and Fluff’s wriggling body, while 
Lady West graciously apologized for her grandchild’s audacity. 

• 1 think you must be Mr. Beauclerk’s little ward,” she was say- 

ing. “ We saw you in church yesterday, Pussums and 1. It is 
very good of you to indulge this naughty child.” And then Lady 
West saw Frauces, and made her a friendly bow. “It is some 
years since we have met,” she said, in her kind, fussy old way; 
” but you see our children here are renewing the acquaintance for 
us. I hope yon will shake hands with me, Miss Beauelerk.” 

, Frances could but accept the proffered hand, but she had the air 
of conferring a favor as she did so. 
j “ Cherry is inclined to do thoughtless things,” she began a little 
severely; but Lady West stopped her with a smile. 

‘‘It was Pussums’s fault,” she declared. “ Or perhaps Miss 
Cherry’s sweet face was to blame. She is really a lovely child! 
At all events I am glad the introduction has come about, even in 
so irregular a fashion. Your brother, I hope, is quite well?” 

Gran-Gran,” cried Pussums the irrepressible, “ do make Cherry 
Vanbrugh come home with us to luncheon! Her name is Cherry 
Vanbrugh. Mine,” she explained, turning now to Cherry, whose 
dark eyes were lull of laughter—” mine is Clementina Fordyce 


CHERRY. 


33 


Pussums West, and Fluffs is — Flufl. ami Dolly’s is Mamzelle. 
Papa brought her from Paris. Papa is away now and i have no 
one to play with. Do come home with me, you pretty Cherry!” 

Will you spare her to us?” hazarded kind Lady West, while 
Miss Beauclerk stood stately and unsmiling. 

Cherry looked at Frances wistfully. The day was so fine; Ileniy 
would not be home for hours and hours, and theie was not much to 
see or to do in Eden How, 

“ I am sorry that Cherry has an engagement for this morning,” 
was Miss Beauclerk’s answer. ** I am afraid we are lingering too 
long as it is. Good-morning, Lady West.” 

“ Good-bye,” Cherry said then, her lip trembling. “ 1 am sorry 
I can not go and play with you, Pussums! Go 3d -bye, Fluft and 
Mamzelle!” She kissed the little girl on both cheeks, and then, to 
Miss Beauclerk’s horror, held up her fresh face very simply to 
Lady West, who, surprised, but well pleased, kissed her very 
heartily, and patted her shoulder. 

“ Good-bye, my dear,” she said gently. “ Some other day, per- 
haps, Miss Beauclerk will spare you to us. You know we are in 
Lowford for two months longer. Good-morning, Miss Beaucleik; 
1 am very glad to have met you. Home, James ”— to the footman 
as he touched his hat; and so, with a little clatter and prancing of 
Hie horses, the carriage drove off, Pussums blowing kisses and 
■waving her hand, and Fluff harking more excitedly than ever. 

“ Have 1 an engagement?” Cherry asked timidly, as she and 
Frances turned homeward through the sunshiny streets. ”1 did 
not know.” 

” Of course not ” — with a calm smile. But do you suppose 1 
can allow you to make acquaintances in the street? Lady West had 
no right to ask you to luncheon as she did.” 

“ But, you know her, don’t, you, Frances?” 

“ l taught her daughter-in-law music at one time. Lady West 
has never called on me. There is no reason why she should. I 
was well paid by Mr. Fordyce for my lessons. 1 expected nothing 
more.” 

“ 1 see,” Cherry sighed. “ What a funny little darling the little 
girl is! I told her about my swung. She says she has never been 
in a swing. 1 wish she might come and play with me some 
day.” 

Miss Beauclerk looked at the child with her cold bright stare. 

“ It sounds so absurd to hear a girl of seventeen talking of ‘ play- 
2 


34 


CHERRY. 


in?,’ ” she said, laughing slightly. “ When 1 was your age 1 hail 
already ret used an offer.” 

‘That did tor you instead of playing,” Cherry returned, wist- 
fully again ” You know 1 haven’t any one to make me otters, or 
perhaps i should like that as well.” 

She told Henry tiiat evening, as soon as they were alone in the 
cool elm-shaded yard, about her little adventure ot the morning, 
and how much she had wished to accept Lady West’s invitation. 

She had expected him to sympathize with her in her disappoint- 
ment, but to her surprise Henry, looked as cold and as displeased 
as Frances had done. 

“ Why were you so anxious to go home with those strangers?” 
Ue demanded roughly, “ Are you so tired of Eden Row, and of us 
already?” 

The girl looked at him wonderingly. 

“No indeed,” she said sincerely. “I am very happy here, 
Henry. But— the little girl was so tunny, and Lady West spoke so 
kindly, that 1 thought—” 

“ yes— yes,” he muttered. “ You thought you would like to go 
and make friends with them— people who would forget you before 
they had left Low ford a week. That is the way of the world.” 

“ I don’t like to think that,” pleaded Cherry, with a coaxing little 
face. “You would not forget me in a week, Henry, if I went 
away?” 

“lam not in the world— the great world. Have not 1 often told 
you, child, how false and hollow the great world is— how it makes 
merry with you in your prosperity, and forsakes you in your need?” 

“ YYs.” Cherry hung her head. The theme was indeed a fa- 
vorite one with Henry, during their long and friendly talks. “ But 
somehow— 1 don’t know why, Henry— the world never really seems 
to me as bad as you make it out. 1 — 1 often think ’ with a timid 
little burst of confidence — ” that i should like to see it, and and 
judge for myself, you know T .” 

Henry broke into a bitter laugh. 

“ Of course,” he said, “ 1 might have known that you could not 
resist a tew plausible words, nr the sight of a flue carriage, any 
more than the rest of your sex. Oh, little Cherry, you are all alike 
—all alike!” 

Cherry slipped a little hand under his arm, and laid her head 
against his shoulder iu the pretty sisterly fashion that had grown 
upon her. 


CHERRY. 


35 


“ Melissa aid not care for fine words or carriages/ ’ she whispered 
gently. “ Would you have said such unkind things to lier?” 

“Melissa!” Henry passed his clumsy old hand across his eyes 
with a kind of groan. “Melissa is an angel in Heaven! What 
has she to do with our miserable vanities and passions, my dear?” 

Cherry rubbed her cheek softly up and down his coat-sleeve in- 
stead of answering. And in silence they took a few turns up and 
down the cool twilight yard, where the elms stood tall an :1 black 
above them. Then Cherry spoke again. Her thoughts had evi- 
dently been dwelling on the meeting of the morning. 

“ Why does Sir Charles West stay awaj” from his little girl?” she 
asked. “ Is not he fond of her, Henry?” 

“ No doubt, after the fashion of his world. Ah ’’—with a second 
bitter laugh— “ I see what it is, Cherry! You will never be satis- 
fied until you have paid this visit. You will go aua see these peo 
pie, and come back discontented with us and our shabby surround- 
ings. Well, 1 suppose it is only natural.” 

“ Indeed it would be very unnatural,” cried Cherry, firing up 
with generous indignation. “ How could 1 forget that you gave me 
a home when 1 had nowhere in the wide world to go? How could 
I forget that you were papa’s friend, of whom he often and often 
talked to me, when I did not know he was dying, and — ” 

“Cherry! Cherry— don’t, my dear! I am a brute. Y'ou must 
not mind what I say.” 

But already she was gulping down her tears, and she looked up 
into his penitent disturbed face with a little nod and smile. 

“ I do not want to go to the Crescent,” she declared, and then 
she corrected herself; “not very much, that is, Henry! Bui you 
ought to know, even if 1 did, that my heart has room in it for more 
than two people. Papa and you are there already, safe enough! 
So why should you mind my going to play with that little girl?” 

She stooped to pick up a bit of lilac which had dropped from her 
belt, and when she looked up again, wondering at his silence, she 
found that he was gazing at her in a queer absent way, and that his 
deep-set eyes were full, under their shaggy brows, of an expression 
she had never seen in them before. 

Bv way of making it up, if she had vexed him, she began to stick 
the flower into his button-hole; but he pushed aside her hands, al- 
most rudely, and walked off without a word into the house. 

Cherry felt a queer compassionate stirring at hei heart. She fol- 
lowed him, and found him in the dusky little study, where he was 
sitting with his elbows on the table, biting his nails, and scowling 


36 


CHERRY, 


as be often unconsciously did when he was annoyed. The child 
went and knelt down by his knee. 

“ Henry,” she whispered fondly, “ why did you run away? Are 
you really angiy with me? Don’t you know that 1 would give up 
more than a visit to Lady West it you wished it?” 

“ Would you?” He turned round, and took her sweet little dark 
face in both his palms, looking down into it, pale and fierce. “ Tell 
me that again! Say that you don’t want to leave me! 1 can’t let 
you go. These people have everything in the world besides— why 
should they want to steal you from me?” 

“ They don’t, dear,” Cherry answered gently. “ Nobody really 
wants me but you. 1 dare say they will never think of me again.” 

She was greatly moved and touched by the poor fellow’s distress, 
and veiy grateful to him for his affection. At one time she would 
hardly have believed it possible that she should care as much for him 
as she now did. His dark and ugly face had frightened her just at 
first. But she had grown used to that, and Knew what gentle 
thoughts weie hidden under his uncouth looks. 

“ Come out and give me a swing!” she whispered, in the little 
wheedling childish voice he loved. “ 1 am going to stay with you 
forever and a day, Henry! But if you scold me any more I will 
just fly off above the elms, and never come back!” 

He sighed and let go her hands. Then he rose and walked oft to 
the swing, leaving Cherry to scramble up from her knees, and fol- 
low him as best she could 


CHAPTER IV. 

Lady West did not forget Cherry. Only a day or two later she 
drove up to the old arched gateway of Eden Row, and made a 
formal call on Miss Beauclerk. 

No one was at home, as it happened, but Cherry found the cards 
when she got back from her shopping with Frances, and she could 
not help jumping for joy. 

” 1 am glad they have not forgotten,” she cried, with an ingen- 
uous blush, “ though of course it does not matter. Perhaps they 
will not ask me to luncheon again. And if they do — 1—1 think 
Henry would rather 1 did not go to see Lady AVest. Does he dislike 
her, Frances?” 

“ He dislikes condescension to any member of his household,” 
returned Frances composedly. “ But 1 have no doubt Lady West 
will ask you to luncheon again, and that you will go.” 


CHERRY. 


37 


Cherry hung her head. She was conscious of an intense desire 
to go— of an intense desire for almost any break in the tranquil 
monotony of her daily life. She was so young. It was stifling — 
kind as Henry was— to live with middle-aged people only; never to 
hear a laugh or a joke but her own. Cherry was ashamed of her 
secret longing, but she knew very well that it was there. 

And before very long it w r as gratified. Miss Beauclerk returned 
Lady West’s call with scrupulous politeness, taking Cherry with 
her; and Lady West, in her wish to please Pussums, took pains to 
anticipate all the civil evasions that occurred to Frances, and act 
ually succeeded in keeping Cherry to luncheon. 

Cherry gave a little gasp of pleasure as she found herself alone 
with Lady West, and saw Miss Beauclerk’s stately figure pass by 
the railings on her way home. But, iu a moment more, Lady West 
saw the young joy ebb fast out of her face. 

“ What is it, ray dear child?” she asked kindly. “ We will go 
up to the nursery now, and tell Pussums.” 

Cherry confessed that she was thinking about Henry. 

“ I forgot about him until this moment,” she admitted, coloring 
with shame. “ 1 promised him— 1 mean we were going to walk to 
the Out-lane this evening, and pick blue-bells, Lady West! 1 — I 
think I had better go— 1 can run after Frances.” 

“ Nonsense, my love!” said the old lady, laughing kindly. 44 You 
can walk with Mr. Beauclerk to-morrow eveniug instead, lam 
sure he will not grudge you a little amusement to-day. Pussums 
will be wild with joy; and I know you must want your luncheon.” 

And so— sighing, reluctant, longing— poor little Cherry yielded. 

Henry came home a few minutes earlier that evening. He had 
hastened his work in the office, and on his way home he had bought 
a pretty little basket for Cherry’s blue-bells. He found only Frances 
in the cool lilac-scented parlor. She was making out her pupils’ 
accounts, and told him briefly wlure Cherry was. Poor Henry’s 
face began to scowl, but lie took himself off without a word. Soon 
it would be dinner-time, she must be back by then, and lie went and 
watched for her outside the door. People at the windows opposite 
saw him walking up and down, and hitting at the railings with his 
stick. 

“ They tempted her away,” he was saying. “ She did not want 
to go. She promised me.” 

After a wnile Frances came and tapped on the pane and told him 
that dinner was ready, but he took no notice. Then the maid came 


38 


< HERRY. 


and called him in, but he was watching the street along which 
Cherry must coine, and heard nothing. 

In a few moments he saw, not the little tripping shape that he 
was waiting for, but one of Mr. For dyce’s tall footmen, who touched 
his hat, and gave Mr. Beauclerk a note. It was for Fiances, from 
Lady West. They had persuaded Miss Cherry to stay to dinner, 
she wrote. She was sure that Miss Beauclerk would forgive her, 
as Possums really refused to be separated from her new playfellow. 

“ I recommend you to eat your dinner uow,” said Frances quietly ; 
but Henry, taking up the little basket be bad bought, turned away, 
and went out again. His sister beard the iron gate clang tc behind 
him, and then his footsteps dying gradually away. 

Cherry was at that moment helping to undress Pussums in the big 
airy nursery in the Crescent; a process which was delayed by Miss 
Clementina’s efforts to make Fluff say his prayers. It was not un- 
til the pretty spoiled child had fallen asleep that Cherry could creep 
away r , and then she went down-stairs and found Lady West in the 
drawing- room, and begged to be allowed to go home at once, with- 
out waiting for dinner. 

“ But, my child, I thought you said,” began the lady. “ 1 had 
set my heart on your dining with Mr. Fordyce and myself. We are 
quite alone, you know, and — ” 

“ Oh, L must go!” repeated Cherry earnestly; and her dark eyes 
were full of tears. ‘‘1 am sorry to seem rude and fickle, but I 
can’t bear to think of Henry dining alone; 1 ought to have said so 
sooner, but— but I wanted to stay.” 

“ You have been happy with us then, my love?” the lady asked, 
drawn irresistibly toward the pretty pale child. “ 1 am glad of 
that!” 

“Oh, I have been too happy, lam afraid, Lady West!” She 
lowered her voice in an earnest way — ” Is this the World?” 

“ My darling child, what can you mean?” crieil Lady West, puz- 
zled and amused. ” This? — what?” 

“ 1 mean this house— and .you— and Pussums? Is this the great 
World? Oris it only in London?” The child’s sweet dark eyes 
were fixed upon her friend's face in a little agony of doubt and 
suspense. 

Lady West began to understand. 

“ What a sweet odd little creature!” she thought rapidly. “ How 
Charles would he amused by her!” And she added aloud in a re- 
assuring manner, “ My dear little Cherry, we are only very plain 
old-fashioned people; you need not be afraid of us at all! Kiss me, 


CHERRY. 


39 


and promise me that you will come again; come very olten, and 
play with Pussums?” 

Cherry flung her arms warmly about Lady West’s neck. 

“Oh, you are very good and kind!” she cried, smiles breaking 
out again, in her relief. “ I should like to come! I think Kenry 
will let me, when he knows that this is not like London. Good- 
bye, dear Lady West, and thank you a hundred times for my beau- 
tiful holiday!” 

Then Lady West’s maid brought a warm little white cloak to tie 
on over Cherry’s muslin dress; and, when she got into the carriage, 
she found a big box of French bonbons waiting for her with Pus- 
sums ’s love, and a bunch of roses like those she had admired so 
much in the great conservatory. 

She could not enjoy the color and fragrance of her flowers, for 
thinking uneasily about Henry. 

“ 1 will give them all to him,” she thought; “ and my bonbons 
to Frances. 1 hope he will forgive me, and not put on his sad 
look!” 

So she drove up in great state to the old gateway, where the lamp 
was already alight ana glimmering among the thick-leaved ivy. 
She had expected to see Henry smoking his pipe at tne parlor win- 
dow, but. there was no one there. The house looked dark and lonely 
— even Frances was out. She bad gone to evening service, the lit- 
tle maid explained, at St. Mark’s. 

Cherry could not bear the look of the dusky silent room. There 
was nothing tor her to eat, of course, though she had had no dinner 
yet. She had not the heart even to go upstairs and take off her 
best frock, as she ought to have done; so, wrapping the white cloak 
more closely round her shoulders — it felt like Pussums’s little arms, 
she thought, and smelt like Lady West’s roses— she went and sat 
down on the door step, as she had otten seen the neighlors’ children 
do in the summer evenings. It was very still now in the old pas- 
sage — all the children were in bed; the trees rustled sadly above her 
head, a star or two peeped out beyond the dusky chimney-pots, the 
sparrows were drowsily twittering in the ivy. 

Not a footfall or a voice broke the evening silence. Cherry felt 
as if she had done something dreadful, and that no one would speak 
to her any more. The very lights in the opposite windows and the 
drawn-down blinds seemed to shut her out blankly from all sympa- 
thy oi companionship; far off she could hear the murmuring echoes 
of the town. 

It appeared to her that she sat there a long time. It grew dark 


40 


CHERRY. 


and chilly; she was very hungry and tired, but still neither Fiances 
nor Henry came home. It was very seldom that Miss Beaucierk 
was so late. No doubt she had been carried oft to the house of one 
ot her pupils. Henry was the first to appear. 

When Cherry saw him coming, looking very tired and walking 
very slowly, she sprung up with a sigh of relief, and began to cry, 

“ Oh, Henry,’* she sobbed, “ 1 thought you would never come 
back! Are you angry with me? Come in and 1 will tell you.” 

He stood in the dusky street holding her hand and looking into 
the pretty tearful face with eyes full of melancholy kindness. 

“ No, 1 am not angry,” he said; “ it was quite natural.” 

“ No, no! It was mean of me to forget my promise; but 1 did 
until 1 saw Frances going home, and then I could not bear to give 
up my day in the Crescent.” 

“ 1 understand,” he answered, very gently still; but the haggard 
look of his face and his dusty boots and clothes somehow struck a 
keen pang to Cheriy’s little heart. “ You were right to go if you 
wished it, my dear. Why do you cry?” 

“ Oh, and it was so delightful!” the girl exclaimed, brightening 
a little under his kind words and hastily drying her eyes. “And 
Lady West wants me 1o go again, Henry. She says that they are 
not in the World; so 1 thought perhaps you would not. mind; and 
1 don’t think she is false at all, dear. She gave me such delicious 
roses — red ones. They are all for you; I have put them in thestuiiy 
near your violin-case. Come and see them.” 

She began gently to pull him into the house, and then she saw 
the basket in his hand. 

“ What is that?” she said. “ What a pretty little basket! Oh, 
Henry, where have you been?” 

“ 1 have been to the Out-lane for the blue-bells. Take the bas- 
ket, Cherry; 1 bought it for you.” 

“ Oh, thank you!” she cried, opening it and peeping in. “ Hut 
— where are the blue bells, Henry?” 

He colored and rubbed bis hand across his forehead. 

“ Are they not in the basket ?” he said, confused. 

Cherry turned the empty basket upside down, and broke into a 
little laugh. 

“ Oh, you dear, stupid, kind, thoughtful, thoughtless old Henry,” 
she cried gay ly, crowning him with it, “you wanted me thereto 
remind you to pick them!” 

After that day the carriage from the Crescent was often to be seen 
standing at the old gateway of Eden How. Lady West, who was 


CHERRY. 


41 


quite charmed with Cherry’s simplicity and sweet looks, had per- 
severed, with gentle well-bred obstinacy, in her invitations, and had 
even brought Henry himselt to admit, ruefully enough, that the 
June days were long to be spent alone in their quiet house by a 
pretty grn of seventeen. 

So long as Cherry was home again to dinner— a point on which 
the girl herself insisted— could it be other than a source of satisfac- 
tion, the lady continued, smiling, to him and to his sister that their 
young ward enjoyed durng the day some of the amusement and 
companionship so natural to her age? 

“We will take good care of her,” she assured poor Henry, who 
scowled and blushed and bit his nails furiously, but could find not 
a word to say. 

As tor Frances, she was honestly indifferent on the point. She 
tried to think as little as possible about the girl who had been so un- 
ceremoniously left on their hands. First, because she avoided un- 
pleasant subjects on principle, and next, because the additional in- 
come accruing from Cherry’s presence under their roof was by no 
means to be despised. But, if she had cared to search her feelings, 
she would have known that she had never learned to forgive pDor 
Cherry for being only seventeen, or for having eyes of so velvet a 
darkness, a skin as white as milk, and manners so winning that 
hardly any one could resist them. 

So by degrees poor William Vanbrugh’s little daughter begau to 
teel quite at home in the handsome house where Pussums reigned 
with such absolute sway. The two children— Cherry was no better 
than a baby when she was with Clementina— flitted gayly about 
the brown old rooms and galleries with their shining oaken panels 
and faded Turkey carpets. They made up wonderful games with 
the cast-off finery in the garrets, they wove wreaths of flowers for 
their heads, and sung songs to the old school-room piano, which 
poor little Jane used so listlessly to thrum during her lessons with 
Miss Beauclerk. As the two young things played, the dead mother’s 
face looked wistfully down from its great gold frame on the wall. 
A picture of her hung over little Clementina’s cot too in the nursery. 
Cherry often looked at the sweet plain little lady and pitied her for 
dying so young. She got an idea into her head, as girls will, that 
her husfeand had been unkind to Lady West. She pictured poor 
Sir Charles as a kind of monster with black hair and fierce eye- 
brows. 

Sir Charles’s mother was delighted to know that with Cherry 
Pussums was happy and out of mischief. She was very busy just 


42 


CHERRY. 


then; there were the inevitable Lowford hospitalities to be gone 
through and to be letumed. She had her hands quite full; and she 
was besides secretly uneasy about her son, whose absence was be- 
ginning to give offense to Mr. Fordyce. 

Sir Charles had certainly put off his appearance in Lowford from 
week to week, in a manner that struck Lady West as being decid- 
edly alarming. Even Pussums’s little piinted letters, full of eager 
messages and loving commands, failed to bring him down from 
tow T n, where the season was then at its height. 

Lady West felt that there was every cause for alarm. Her son 
had seemed to be smitten with a certain lady — a widow T — during the 
winter. They had met her at almost every house to which they 
had been invited. Lady West did not approve of Mrs. Lancaster, 
pretty and elegant as she was. In her opinion, the coquettish 
widow w T as not at all the kind of mother that Sir Charles ought to 
gi^e to their darling little girl. But at his age it was only natural, 
of course, that he should think of marrying again, and there was 
no doubt that he had been a little fascinated. Country-house life 
is so dangerous; it affords designing women so many opportunities. 

In her increasing anxiety Lady West actually confided in old For- 
dyce, and suggested that the be&t way to find out what Sir Charles 
was doing would be to pay him a little visit in London unawares. 

“ It will be an excellent opportunity to take Clementina to the 
dentist, my dear sir,” urged the harassed diplomate. 44 And you 
will see that w r e shall bring our dear prodigal back with us. He 
will never be able to resist little Clem’s entreaties.” 

Old Fordyce grumbled a good deal, and wanted to know why the 
best dentist in Lowford could not be trusted to pull out Miss Clem- 
entina’s little tooth. But, feeling as he did, that Iris annual festivi- 
ties were shorn of their greatest attraction in the absence of 44 my 
son-in-law, the baronet,” the old manufacturer was at length 
moved to consent to Lady West’s plan. 

44 For one week, my lady, and no more,” he declared bluntly. 
44 If you are not all back by that time, I’ll come and fetch you 
home myself.” 

A dreadful old man! But, for his favorite grandchild’s sake, 
would it not be a pity to offend him? 

Poor little Cherry was the only one who did not hear with delight 
of the proposed visit to London. Pussums chattered incessantly 
all day long of the many things she intended to do, and to sse, and 
to buy, when she was once again at home with papa. Fluff wanted 


CHERRY. 43 

a new collar, and JVlamzelle, who was now engaged to Prince 
Charming in the story-book, must have a handsome troitsseau. 

“ What a pity it is summer!” she cried to her playfellow, 
“ There will be no pantomime to go and see. Don’t you like panto- 
mimes, Cherry-mine?” This was what Pussums called her iriend; 
the little thing had a great fancy for inventing pet names. 

”1 don’t know, dear,” Cheiry said, soberly shaking her dark 
head. “ I have never seen a pantomime; 1 have never been inside 
a theater in my life!” 

Miss Clementina gave a small gasp of compassion. 

“ Oh, you poor, poorest little Cherry-mine!” she cried, getting up 
to cover the pretty cheeks with kisses. ” What an awful lot you 
have to learn!” And, as Lady West came into the room at that 
moment, the little child ran up eagerly. 

“ Oh, Gran-Gran, what do you think? Cherry-mine has never 
been to the theater in her life! She must come to London with us, 
and we will take her to one, won’t we?” 

Lady West smiled. 

“ Indeed,” she replied, " that would be very pleasant for all of 
us if it could be managed.” 

But Cherry only shook her head again; she knew that it was out 
of the question. 

“ You dear little goose,” she said to Pussums, heroically smother- 
ing a sigh, ” what should 1 do in London? I am a country cousin. 
You would be shocked at the way I should stare at everything; 1 
believe 1 should scream if 1 were to see the queen.” 

“ I have seen the queen,” said Clementina calmly. ‘‘ Gran- 
Gran looks more like one when she wears her point lace. But it is 
quite settled, Cherry-mine. You are to go to London with us. If 
you don’t go, 1 won’t go; and I won’t have my tooth out. 1 will 
cry and kick, and bite Mr. Alley ne’s hand.” 

44 My darling!” remonstrated Lady West in distress. 44 Cherry 
is quite shocked. I am sure you will be a good little girl and do 
whatever papa ■wishes.” 

“ Yes, 1 will, if papa will do what I wish a little!” And then 
she put her little arms round the grandmother’s neck and began to 
wheedle her. 

Cherry’s heart was beating fast, as she walked home that even- 
ing, attended by one of the tab footmen from the Crescent. What 
it such a beautiful wild dream should come true? Would it not be 
Something to remember and to think of for the rest of her life? She 


44 


CHERRY. 


would see the world for herself then, and know whether Henry 
head described it aright. 

It was wilh a great effort that she contrived to put away the re 
membranceof PussuznsY idle words, and to be ready to meet Henry 
with a smile, and a flower for his coat, when he came home from 
the close and dusty office. But the effoit was made. JNor did she 
give him a hint as to what was filling her dark eyes with dreams all 
that long June evening in the yard. 

She had almost persuaded herself, when next she went to the 
Orescent, that she hoped Pussums had forgotten all about her sud- 
den whim. But her heart gave a great thump when, as soon as she 
entered the house, the child came running to her with an eager de- 
claration that grandpapa said she was lo go, and that Gran-Gran 
would coax Mr. Beauelerk to say yes. 

Pussums had stuck to her point with a pertinacity worthy ot old 
Fordyce's grandchild. Old Fordyce himself, when appealed to by 
his small tyrant and idol, declared that he saw no reason why the 
lass should not go. 

“ She's got a sweet, little face to take up among the bedizened 
frippery yonder/’ he said in his usual vigorous style. “ If she 
wants a fifty-pound note to buy ribbons to set it off, she can have 
it from me! lliose who are good to my little Clem, here, sha’n’t 
lose by it. You take Miss Cherry, my lady, and I’ll stand the 
ex’s.” 

Lady West was only too willing, and she volunteered, having al- 
ready been so successful in her Eden Bow diplomacy, 10 obtain 
Beauelerk ’s consent. But Cherry, whose cheeks were burning hot, 
declared steadily that she must ask Henry herself. 

“ I am breaking my promise again,” she thought, lorn between 
her pity for the man who had been as a brother to her, and her in- 
extinguishable longing tor a little pleasure, movement, excitement. 
“ But at least 1 will tell him so myself; 1 will not be a coward as 
well.” 

It was the hardest task, she found, that she had ever set herself. 
Poor Henry had come home full of another scheme to give her 
pleasure. They had granted him a few (lays' liolida5 r from the 
office; his quarter's salary had just been paid; he actually proposed 
to Frances, some ot whose pupils were already leaving town, that 
they should take Cherry to the sea-side. He had his plan all ready, 
and had calculated the expenses with a nicety that Miss Beauelerk 
herself could not have excelled. 

Cherry hung her head guiltily while the subject was being dis- 


CHERRY. 


45 


cussed at dinner, and later— it was a rainy evening, and she was 
sitting with Henry in the small study — she told him, desperately, 
ot Lady West’s invitation, and of her desire to accept it.. 

“It is not because Pussums wishes it, or because it will please 
Lady West,” the girl said bravely, but with burning cheeks. “ It 
is because — oh. Henry, I can’t help it!— I want to go myself! But 
you don’t think 1 am ungrateful to you for thinking about Nortli- 
port? You don’t think 1 am not quite happy here with you? It 
is only for a week, you know, and then I shall be hack again, and 
we will go on with Schiller. Say that you don’t mind very much! 
1 won’t go at all if you look like that!” 

For Henry had closed the book with a great thump, and sat star- 
ing at her, livid and dismayed. 

“ Y'ou will not go to the sea-side with us?” he blurted out. 
“ You want to go away — with those strangers — to London?” 

Cherry made an entreating little face. 

“They aie not quite strangers, Henry,” she pleaded, her dark 
eyes filling with tears. “ And — and 1 do like them, 1 can’t help 
it.” 

He broke into one of his old bitter laughs. 

“Then go!” he said. “Go by all means! They have taken 
you from me! 1 knew they would! They have everything their 
hearts can desire, and 1 had only you — but they have won you from 
me! May they — ” 

He checked himself abruptly, seeing the fright in Cherry’s pale 
and pretty face. The girl stood up, trembling. 

“ Oh, Henry,” she said, “ you look dreadful! Ho you feel ill? 
Let rne get you a glass of water, dear!” 

But the next moment, with an effort, he smiled at her, and 
brought the color back into her face. 

“No — no, my little Cherry,” he said, putting out his tender 
clumsy hand to stroke her hair. “ I am not ill. Go, my dear, if 
you wish; only promise me to come back, and not to be afraid of 
me. There is no reason. 1 would rather die than frighten you!” 

“Hear Henry!” The little thing nestled to him, reassured,, 

“ And you won’t be lonely while 1 am gone? And you will water 
my mignonette for me, and write to me every day?” 

“ You will not care for my letters,” said the poor fellow, a dark 
flush rising to his sallow face. “ You will have Sir Charles West 
to amuse you. Most women find him very agreeable, I am told.” 

“That horrid man!” cried little Cherry. “Oh, Henry— for 
shame!” 


4G 


CHERRY. 


So it ended, at tlie cost of a silent and heroic sacrifice on pool 
Henry's part, and of a tew twinges of conscience on Cherry’s, in 
Pussums having her own way. But there was no nee l of Mr. For- 
dyce’s fifty pounds, as Miss Yanbrugh very simply explained to 
the old gentleman when he repeated his offer. 

“ 1 have plenty of ribbons, thank you, Mr. Fordyce,” she said, 
not in the least offended. “ Every quarter the lawyers send me 
some money — more than I can spend.” 

Ana she resolved that she would buy a splendid new watch and 
chain for Henry while she was away. 

There w 7 as no Sir Charles in Brook Street to receive Lady West 
and her young visitor. He had been out of town, his confidential 
man explained, for three days — at Cowes, Clinton believed. 

Her ladyship’s letters and telegrams had, of couise. been duly 
forwarded, and there was no doubt that they would bring Sir 
Charles home without delay. 

“ It is that Lancaster woman again!” sighed Lady West inward 
ly; and then she had to help Cherry in consoling Pussums, who 
was loudly crying for her truant papa. 

They had luncheon at once, after which the carnage was ordered, 
and they set oft to order MamzelJe’s trousseau , and to see about 
Fluff’s collar. All this important business took quite a long time 
to accomplish, and it was not till the time when Henrj 7 , down in 
smoky Lowford, would be walking home to dinner, that the car- 
riage turned into the Park, and Cherry was given her first glimpse 
of the world of so many dreams and desires and warnings. 

Lady West’s relief was extreme when, in a perfectly appointed 
victoria, she espied Mrs. Lancaster, whom she had injuriously im- 
agined as playing the part of siren down at Cowes. The pretty 
widow was profuse in smiles. Was there ever anything so fortu- 
nate as their meeting? A day later, and she would have missed 
dear Lady West. Lady West had just arrived in London? Only 
for a few days? Had no engagement? And Sir Charles was still 
away? She must positively come and dine with Mrs. Lancaster, 
and go and hear an act of “ Mignon ” afterward. Yes, and Miss 
Vanbrugh, too! They would be just a c^zy little party. Was it 
really possible that dear Lady West’s little friend had never heard 
an opera? She could not make a better beginning than by going to 
hear Nilsson and Capoui in “Mignon.” How one envied Miss 
Vanbrugh her fresh impressions and her pretty country roses! And 
how much darling Pussums had grown! At seven then— just time 


CHERRY. 


47 


to rush home and dress; for Miss Vanbrugh’s sake they must try to 
be in time for the first act. 

Cherry was in a rapture. The Park alone, she thought, would 
have been enough to think about for one day; and now, here was 
this bewildering, beautiful, smiling young woman with the auburn 
hair and Paris costume, and winning air, and the opera to finish up 
with! 

Lady West, as they drove home, was full of practical inquiries 
as to Cherry’s dress, gloves, opera-cloak Was she sure she had 
everything she needed? And Cherry, secure in the remembrance 
of a fresh white muslin frock, declared that she had. 

So it happened that, when Sir Charles arrived late lhat evening, 
there was no one at home, except his little sleeping girl in her cot, 
with faithful old Hannah stitching by her side. Sir Charles 
stooped down to kiss the little tranquil flushed cheek, and. as he did 
so, he told himself that he was surer than ever he had done rightly 
in running away from Blanche Lancaster, whom, though at times 
almost irresistible in her fascination and apparent devotion to him- 
self, lie could never picture as the mother of his little girl, or as 
good homely Hannah’s new T mistress. 

He went oft to his club to get something to eat, and then, not 
caring to follow the ladies to Her Majesty’s, he came soberly home 
again to await his mother’s return. 

The night w^as warm— hardly a breath of air stirring the boxes of 
mignonette at the open window— and Sir Charles had already en- 
joyed quite a comfortable doze over the last number of the “ Corn- 
hill,” when Cherry came running into the room in her little white 
cloak— her cheeks in a flame, her eyes in a glow— and almost fell 
over the sleeping figure in the arm-chair. 

Sir Charles started up, laughing, apologizing, bowing. 

” Oh. 1 beg your pardon!” cried the child, in an absent way. 
Her thoughts were evidently far enough off. She was not embar- 
rassed by the unlooked for apparition of the lazy, long-limbed 
young man in Lady West’s drawingroom. A great many men, 
young and old, bad, during the evening, made their appearance in 
Mrs. Lancaster’s opera box, and Cherry supposed that it must al- 
ways rain gentlemen in London. “Do you want to see Lady 
West?” she added simply. “ She lias gone upstairs to the nursery 
w r ith Mrs. Lancaster. Mrs. Lancaster insisted on seeing Pussums 
asleep.” 

Sir Charles bit his lip and looked uneasy. Then he smiled and 
looked down very kindly at the charming girl in. her white finery. 


48 


<HP]RRY. 


“ It is very amiable of Mrs. Lancaster, 1 suppose,” he said, and 
added aider a moment’s hesitation — ” Has Sir Charles arrived yet, 
do you know?” 

" No; not yet.”* Cheriy was pulling oft her gloves. She was 
still bubbling over with excitement. “ We have been to the 
opera,” she explained breathlessly, nodding up at him. 

He arched his eyebrows with due respect for this important an- 
nouncement. 

“ Oho,” he said, “ that is the meaning of this pretty white gown, 
is it?” 

“ Do you think it is pretty? 1 have not had time to think about 
it. Everything W'as so wonderful! 1” — blushing now and smil- 
ing — “ 1 have never been to a theater before.” 

“ You don’t say so!” 

Sir Charles began to feel quite wide awake. What a sweet-look- 
ing child it was! And w T hat a charming naive manner she had! No 
wonder his mother had gone cracked about bcr, and could talk of 
little else in her letters. 

“ Yes,” Cherry repeated seriously. “ Oh ” —clasping her hands 
in a little ecstasy— ‘‘ 1 did not believe that anything in the world 
could be half so delightful! The lights, and the dowers, aud the 
diamonds! And the stage, above all! The scenery and the music, 
and Nilsson with her poor little bare feet! Oh, how 1 longed to 
give her my shoes! Mrs. Lancaster said it was not real, and that 
she had very comfortable soles under her stockings, but l wish she 
had not told me.” The child ran to the open piano, and began to 
play the “ Gonnais-tu le pays?” 

“ Oh, you have been to hear ‘ Mignon’ ?” said Sir Charles, look- 
ing at her, amused, but kindly too. 

“ Yes”— still picking out the chords as she stood. “ 1 used to 
play that air at school, but it wasn’t a hit like it. What a stupid 
instrument the piano is! Y r ou poor old wooden thing”— she com- 
passionately shook her sweet little dark head above it — “ you don’t 
know how little music you have in you!” 

As she spoke, she sat down on the stool, and— the pretty absorbed 
face being thus hidden from Sir Charles by the open desk — he fol- 
lowed her across the room, and stood leaning his elbows on the 
piano, and watching the girl’s unconscious air. She was still play- 
ing, trying now to get at a bit of the dance-music, with less skill 
than enthusiasm. 

“ Where is the story supposed to take place?” she said, looking 


CHERRY. 


49 


up at him with her dark direct gaze, and frowning a little in her 
earnestness about the chords. 

“ in Germany, I believe.” 

“It really did happen, didn’t it?” 

“‘Mignon’?” laughing. “1 should be inclined to doubt it. 
Toil know the stoiy is taken from Goethe’s — ” 

“ No.” She made a pleading little motion of the head and 
shoulders. “ Please don’t tell me! 1 like to think it is true. 1 am 
sure it must be, or they could not be so much in earnest.” 

She went on playing and humming to herself. Sir Charles laughed 
again, but he sighed too. He looked very tired, and handsome and 
indulgent. 

“ 1 wish I could feel like that again!” he said. 

“ Like what?” She looked up surprised, still humming the air, 
and beating out the accompaniment. 

“ 1 mean— 1 wish 1 could believe in plays, and stories, and all 
that sort of thing.” 

“Don’t you like to go to the theater, then?” Cherry asked, 
eying him with a solemn compassion. 

“ 1 am afraid 1 am a little tired of it. It is always the same, you 
know. One gets to know the tricks of the trade.” 

“ Tricks!”— indignantly. “ Why, do you think they are tricks? 
1 am sure Capoul was really in a rage when that dieadful man was 
going to strike Misrnon. 1 saw his eyes flash. And how kind and 
gentle he was with her afterward! Oh, 1 shall always like him 
tor that! 1 am sure he would do the same for any poor girl who 
was in trouble.” 

“ Oh, youth, freshness, spring-time, white muslin frocks!” 
thought Sir Charles. “What a treat you are after the knowing, 
weary London women one meets every day! What a delicious 
child this is! And how one envies the jortunate fellow who is one 
day to set her heart beating for something a little more real than a 
stage-hero! Her first love will be as irreat a surprise to her as her 
first opera. How frightened she will be, poor child! And how 
adorable!” 

“ There was only one thing 1 could not understand,” Cherry 
broke in. “ Why was Mignon jealous of Filina?” 

“ Because, i suppose, she is in love with Wilhelm from the first, 
and Wilhelm, not knowing, amuses himself by flirting with Filina.” 

“is that flirting?”— seriously. “ I am glad 1 shall never be a 
flirt. But— are people always jealous when they are in love?” 

“ I believe so. Aren’t they?” 


50 


CHERRY. 


“ I don't know.” The girl’s face clouded. “ Oh to the piano, 
with a final crash—” do hold your tongue, you stupid thing! You 
are not a hit like Nilsson’s singing!” She rose and went back to the 
table, where her gloves and the ” Cornhili ” lay near the shaded 
lamp. ” Perhaps 1 had better go and tell Lady West that you are 
here?” she said. ” Mrs. Lancaster is going to stay to supper. We 
are all hungry, she says, because we dined so early.” 

“ 1 hope you agree with Mrs. Lancaster?” Sir Charles was 
smiling again, and looking very gentle and handsome, and very 
much amused. ” Hut pray don’t take so much trouble for me. I 
will wait until the ladies come down, if you will talk to me a little. 

1 think you must be Miss Vanbrugh? 1 have heard a great deal 
about you from Lady West.” 

“ Oh, have you, really?” Cherry smiled and colored. ” She is 
so kind. 1 am very fond of her, and of Pussums. It was so very, 
very good of them to bring me witli them.” 

”1 hope you will like Sir Charles, too, when you know him.” 

Cherry shook her head. 

“ l don’t think 1 sliali,” she returned coldly. 

«* Why not?” The young man was decidedly taken aback. 
“ Have you ever met him?” 

“ No. And 1 suppose ’’—looking a little guilty—” 1 suppose 1 
ought not to have said. 1—1 forget sometimes to pretend about 
things. I have no doubt Sir Charles West is very ’’—she paused, 
vainly searching tor some adjective which should not involve too 
great a sacrifice of the truth, and then Sir Charles, coming good- 
humoredly to the rescue, changed the subject, and began to talk 
about her playfellow, the little child who was so dear to him, and 
whom he had not long before kissed in her sleep. 

Cherry’s kindling face and unaffected warmth were not to be 
misunderstood. But her artful companion continued his nefarious 
designs. 

” Miss Clementina is a spoiled baby, 1 am afraid,” he suggested, 
with hypocritical gravity. 

Cherry fired up immediately. 

” Indeed, she is no such thing!” she declared, with soft vehe- 
mence. ” You must remember that she is an only child, and has no 
mother, poor little darling! And then she is so funny, and so lov- 
able, that no one can help spoiling her a little. But it does her no 
harm. Pussums is very sensible, and very generous. She always 
takes other people’s parts, and- Please don’t say anything against 
Clem to me!” 


CHERRY. 


51 


Before Sir Charles, well pleased, could answer, Lady West was 
seen coining into tlie room followed by Blanche Lancaster in her 
long embroidered gown. 

“ Cherry, my love,” said grandmamma, 44 Pussums begs to be 
allowed to kiss you now that she is awake. 1 am afraid we dis- 
turbed her, but—” At that moment she caught sight of her son. 
“ My dear Charles!” she cried joyfully. “ When did you arrive? 
Why did not they tell me? Here is Mrs. Lancaster. 1 see you 
have been making friends with Cherry. She — ” 

But Cherry had already flown from the room, and was half-way 
upstairs to the nursery. 

“ Oh, what shall 1 do?” she was thinking, with burning hot 
cheeks. 44 How can 1 ever go down-stairs, or look Sir Charles in 
the face again! After the things 1 said about him! Oh, why didn t 
1 hold my tongue; and why didn’t he tell me who he was! Oh, 
Henry was right, after all. The world is full of deceit and trouble, 
and it is beginning already for me!” 

44 What is the matter, you pretty Cherry-mine!” murmured Pus- 
sums drowsily. 44 Your cheeks are like two red roses! Oh, why does 
not Cliailey-boy come to his own wretched, wretched Clementina?” 

44 Papa will be here early in the morning, you will see,” said 
Cherry soothingly. She was afraid to confess that he had already 
arrived, lest Pussums should insist on going down stairs in tier lit- 
tle night-gown. 44 You go to sleep, and the night will pass so 
quickly. It will be morning before you know it.” 

“ Well, kiss me, then— just there ’’—pointing to her dimpled neck. 

4 1 want you to take away the taste of Mrs. Lancaster’s kisses. 
Why does Gran-Gran make me behave so politely to her? I hate 
her awftully!” 

44 Never mind, darling,” murmured Cherry between her kisses. 
4 ‘ Only go to sleep now, and I will sit by you, and hush Mamzelle 
oft in my arms. Poor Mamzelle— she is very tired; she can hard- 
ly keep her eyes open.” 

“She is thinking of Prince Charming,” declared Pussums, 
yawning. 44 1 shall be heartily glad when the wedding is over, and 
she is off my hands. 1 w^on’t have any engaged dolls again— it is 
too much trouble. Good-night, Clierry-mine. 1 love you -and 
Gran-Gran— and Charley-boy— and— ” 

Old Hannah carried oft the light, and Cherry sat down by the 
cot, with the doll in her lap, and an arm round Pussums's neck. 
As the child drifted oft again toward the land of dreams, poor 
Cherry’s thoughts returned to her disastrous meeting witn Sir 


52 


CHERRY. 


Charles, and to the bad opinion she had expressed of that gentle- 
man to his lace. But how was she to suppose that that was Sir 
Chailes West — that handsome man with the close-cropped curling 
fair hair, and the gentle fawn-colored eyes, with a kind of laugh 
in them all the time? He did not look a bit like a widower, or 
like what Cherry had pictured him in her own mind. He had al- 
ways seemed black and disagreeable enough in the photograph 
books at the Crescent; she had always felt sure she should detest 
him, but now — 

Cherry’s cheeks began to burn again. 

“ How rude 1 was!” she thought distressfully. “ -And lie is not 
disagreeable at all. Quite the contrary. It is no wonder Pussums 
idolizes him so.” 

When presently a servant gently knocked at the door, and saici 
that Lady West begged Miss Vanbrugh to go down-stairs, Cherry 
felt that she would rather have been sent to bed supperless— rather 
have done anything than meet Sir Charles again ; but of course sooner 
or later it had to be done. 

Sir Charles was sitting by Mrs. Lancaster near an open window, 
listening rather absently to that lively lady’s chatter. He sprung 
up as Cherry entered, hanging down her head, and went to meet 
her, holding out his hand. 

”1 hope you will shake hands with me, Miss Vanbrugh,” he 
said very gently, “ just to show that we are friends, and that you 
are not vexed with me for making your acquaintance in disguise. 
1 don’t know what put it into my head; and 1 went on getting 
deeper and deeper in the scrape. Do you forgive me?” 

‘‘Indeed I do,” Cherry answered frankly, blushing and break- 
ing into a laugh in spite of herself, * 4 if you will forgive me. 1 am 
afraid 1 was very rude. You know I really did not think that I 
should like you, but 1 do.” 

Mrs. Lancaster laughed at this confession, but Sir Charles heard 
it with a grave bow. 

“ X am glad,” he said, imitating the child’s simplicity. ‘‘For 
Pussums’s sake it is important that you and 1 should be triends.” 

So Cherry and he shook hands, and then they all sat down to 
supper. 

Cherry thoughi it was the happiest hour she could remember since 
her adoring and indulgent father had left her a!one. Sir Charles's 
jokes and ready laughter filled the young girl with delight. Mrs. 
Lancaster too was all smiles and animation; and Lady West w r as 
always happy when her son was with her. flow pleasant it was to 


CHERRY. 


53 


be with people who were happy! the girl thought; and then, swift 
upon the thought, there followed a remorse! ill pang, as she remem- 
bered poor kind moody Henry all alone in Eden How. 

“ lie can not help being gloomy,’’ she thought loyally. “ He 
has so little to make him happy. Bui oh ’’—sighing — “ 1 do like 
the world. 1 should like to live in it always, it it is always like 
this?” 

Cherry went to bed with visions of more pleasure for the morrow 
floating through her excited little head. Of a water-party on the 
Thames— Sir Charles’s suggestion— of Hampton Court, and Bnshey 
Park, and — 

“ How kind he is!” she thought as she took off her white frock, 
and let Hannah brush out her long dark locks, ‘‘lam very, very 
happy here! And 1 have only six more days! 1 must go home 
then — ” 

Again the remorseful twinge came stealing across her pleasure. 

*' No matter!” she decided, bravely. ‘‘ I shall remember this 
beautiful bright week all my life. And Henry is kind too — kindest 
ot all! 1 shall be very glad to go back to him, and to our German, 
and the swing, and my mignonette. But — but I do like Sir Charles. 
1 am sorry I ever thought such hard things of him.” 


CHAPTER V. 

Before three days of Cherry’s holiday had passed. Sir Charles 
West proposed to Mrs. Lancaster. 

Blanche laughed at him, though there was perhaps a tinge of bit- 
terness in her laugh. 

‘‘INow what on earth induced you to do "such a preposterous 
thing!” she remonstrated, as her suitor sat before her in her tiny 
shaded drawing-room, holding his hat on his knees, and staring 
moodily past her into the flower-laden balcony, with its striped awn- 
ings and china pots. 44 Ha\re you by any chance mistaken me for 
Miss Vanbrugh, Sir Charles? It is a (faltering mistake! Cherry is 
eight years younger than I am, more’s the pity.” 

The gloom deepened on his face. 

“ Is it in that way,” he asked, “ that ladies usually receive the 
offer of a man’s hand?” 

“ No,” she admitted temperately. *‘ At least, I can only speak tor 
myself, ot course. But then 1 don’t remember having been proposed 
to before by a man whom 1 knew to be over ears in love with some one 


54 


CHERRY. 


else. That is an affliction 1 have hitherto been spared, thougii 1 
nave the misfortune to be worth two thousand a year. Oh ” — with 
a pretty and deprecating gesture— “ pray don’t scowl, Sii Charles! 
1 am perfectly well aware that you are not thinking about my 
money at all. Why should you? Y r ou have plenty ot your own. 
No! Do let us talk sense. 1 won’t marry you, so that point is set- 
tled; but 1 don’t mind telling you that a week ago i was beginning 
to think that 1 liked you very much — ” 

“ Blanche!” murmured Sir Charles gratefully, and he attempted 
to take her hand; but the fair widow put them both behind her. 

* Don’t interrupt me!” she cried, with a little imperious air that 
sat very well upon her undeniable charms. ”1 like you still, if 
that is any consolation to you, but 1 would not marry you, or any 
man, unless i were convinced that he loved me twice as well as 1 
loved him. To be loved is so much less troublesome than to love; 
isn’t it. Sir Charles?” 

lie moved uneasily in his luxurious chair, and fell to pulling his 
mustache. He was not quite sure whether the lively Mrs. Lancas- 
ter were chaffing him or not. 

‘‘Now you know very well,” she went on over her embroidery, 
“that you are very far from f3eling such an absorbing sentiment 
for me, old friends and comrades as we are; so 1 ask you again 
what induced you to make this absurd offer? Y'our mother does 
not approve of me, and she is quite rignt ; trust a mother’s instinct 
to find that sort of thing out! 1 should have made you a decently 
good wife, I dare say, as wives go, and given you your own way a 
great deal. But ” — the lady shook her fair head gravely — “ 1 
should have fallen out with Pussums twenty times a day. Oh, 1 
should! It is that very point which has made me hesitate many a 
time these six months! 1 have been trying to persuade myself that 
I liked children, and 1 have signally failed. Clementina and 1 
would have been jealous of each other, and a nice time you would 
have had between the two of us, poor fellow!” 

“ Blanche— will you try?” persisted Sir Charles, the old halt- 
reluctant fascination, which a later feeling had superseded, begin- 
ning again to stir in his veins. It must be conceded that Lady 
^Vest's son had not much force of character where pretty women 
were concerned. “ I don’t believe you half mean what you are say- 
ing! You—” 

“ Because 1 don’t curl my lip, or tear my hair, or indulge in a 
mocKing laugh? Oh, the delightful transparent vanity of you 
eligible men! My dear Sir Charles, I mean much more than 1 am 


CHERRY. 


55 


saying. 1 mean that 1 have no mind to let you make a tool of 
yourself, and of me, and that J appreciate the compliment you have 
just paid me, as much as it deseives, and not one bit more!” 

“Really, Mis, Lancaster—” Sir Charles was blessed with an 
exceptionally sweet temper, but it did seem to him that the charm- 
ing widow was a little hard upon him. 

“ And really, Sir Charles,” she echoed, wiiliout looking up from 
her work. “ It is Miss Vanbrugh you must marry, and not me— 
there now! Don't say that I am not your friend still, though 1 
won’t be anything else.” 

“If you are my friend, Blanche,” he pleaded, “take me and 
marry me, and see how good I will be to you. But don’t tell me 
to be selfish, and so — so ridiculous as to want to tie that seventeen- 
year-old child to me, an old fogy of a widower with a daughter 
whose playfellow she is.” 

“ Exactly; and if you marry Cherry, they can go on being play- 
fellows ever after. She is seventeen, you say, and you are — what? 
Four or five-and-thirty, 1 suppose? Sir Charles, let us have no 
mock-modesty, please. The difference in your ages is just nothing 
at all. Indeed, I am not sure that Cherry is not a little bit in love 
with you already.” 

Sir Charles jumped up with an ejaculation and went to the win- 
dow, where he stood drumming on the panes, and staring fiercely 
into the street. Mrs. Lancaster saw that his ear was scarlet. 

“ What is the matter?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. 

“ Don’t chaff, Blanche ’’—turning miserably round, and facing 
her mischievous eyes with a rather sheepish look. “ 1 was a brute 
to come here and ask you to marry me, and you are an angel to 
take it as you do, instead of ordering me out of your house. But I 
won’t trouble you again. 1 shall he off in a few days, and — and 
you won’t let this affair interfere with our friendship, will you?” 

“ Of course not, you goose! But might a body inquire where 
you are oft to?” Mrs. Lancaster spoke calmly enough; and how 
was Sir Charles, full of his own misery, and longing, and doubt, to 
know that she had smothered a sigh before she answered his ques- 
tion. 

“ Oh, anywhere! 1 don’t see that it matters much. All places 
are alike, it seems to me. 1 suppose 1 ought to go down to Low- 
ford according to contract, but 1 shall let my mother and poo? Pus- 
sums do penance tor me.” 

“Don’t do anything of the sort,” suggested Blanche firmly. 


56 


CHERRY. 


“ Go dowu to the Orescent like a dutiful son-in-law, and while you 
are there, or sooner if possible, ask Miss Cherry to have you.” 

“ Pshaw!” He came and flung himself (town now in a low chnir 
at her side. “ What is the use of harping on that, Blanche? Sup- 
posing that — that 1 am spoony on that child— awfully spoony ’’—it 
seemed a relief to be able at least to make a clean breast of it — “ I 
know very w T ell that she does not care a rap for me; bow' should 
she! She looks upon me as quite an old fellow. I am Pussum’s 
father to her, and nothing more.” 

“ But why take all that for granted? Miss Vanbrugh is the per- 
son who ought to know r best. Why not ask her?” 

“ Because I am afraid she would say yes.” 

“ Oh, Sir Charles!” 

“ Well, I am.” He colored again like a boy. “ 1 mean that 1 
— oh, hang it all, Blanche, what is the good of mincing matters! 1 
know, of course, that all women like position and money, small 
blame to them— men do, too; and that p or pretty little darling has 
nothing to Iook forward to but a life in Lowford, and perhaps some 
clerk for a husband; and you may laugh, Blanche, but 1 could not 
bear to think that she would marry me for the mere sake of escap- 
ing from all that. And — ” 

Blanche Lancaster let her work drop into ner lap, and lay back 
in her chair the better to look at him, 

” It is the worst case 1 ever saw,” she declared, appealing with 
raised eyebrow's to the flow r er-boxes and curtains and chairs. “ He 
wants to be loved for himself alone, at the mature age of thirty- 
five. Sir Charles, get up this instant and go home. My advice — 
my serious advice to you— is that you ask Miss Vanbrugh ta be 
yours, as they say in the novels, before you dine to night. You 
may come and tell me, to-morrow, how it all ends. And of course 
you understand that, if she accepts you, you have made an enemy 
of me for life.” 

Sir Charles stood up obediently, and there w r as a look of sudden 
determination and eagerness in his eyes. He lifted Mrs. Lancaster’s 
pretty hands to his lips without a word, and took himself off. 

“ Miss Cherry came just in time,” thought the widow, as, hid- 
den in the balcony, she watched him ride away from her door. I 
had almost made up my mind to accept him.” 

Lady West and her son had been bidden to a family banquet that 
evening— a solemnity which they were willing to spare Cherry; and 
so, tor the first time since her arrival in London, the child had a 
few hours to herself, and one night not devoted to pleasure. She 


rHERRY. 


felt that she was rather glad of a little time in which to draw 
breath and to think She had tea with Pussums in the nursery — 
where Sir Charles also was a guest for five minutes on his way to 
his dressing-room — and a royal game of romps to follow; after 
which, when Clementina was asleep, and Cheery had smoothed her 
own ruffled feathers, she went down stairs into the vast dimly 
lighted drawing-room, whose curtains were swaying slowly in the 
evening breezes. The coolness and silence were refreshing. She 
decided that it would be a good opportunity to write her daily let- 
ter to Henry. 

She had posted one every morning regularly ever since she had 
left home, but so far she had not received a single line in reply. 

“ 1 am afraid Henry is vexed with me,” she thought wistfully. 

She found it impossible to shake off the curious feeling that came 
over her at the thought of the poor fellow. If she had been selfish 
in leaving him for a time, she had been punished for her fault, for 
the remembrance of his haggard face and kind melancholy eyes 
haunted her in the midst of all her delight. The feeling had grown 
to be positively morbid. Once or twice she had been startled by 
seeing him — as she fancied— among the throng of people she saw in 
the Park, or in the crowded streets along which she drove in Lady 
West’s carriage. But, when she had looked again, she had con- 
vinced herself that it had been merely some resemblance to his head 
or figure that had misled her. Then she had drawn a deep breath 
of relief. But before long she would be thinking of him again, 
and uneasily blaming herself for being so happy away from her first 
and best friend. 

It was a troubled happiness, at best, that the child was enjoying, 
but it seemed to Cherry that one day of it was worth more than a 
year of the old monotonous contentment in Eden Row. Every 
morning now, when she awoke, it was like awaking to a new 7 life 
which each clay grew more kind and more intense. It was not 
merely the amusements which awaited her, greatly as she delighted 
in these— in the pretty new costumes which kind Lacly West was 
always devising and ordering for her, in the admiring glances and 
gentle words of the good-natured young men she met, in the pict- 
ures and sights and theaters, the garden-parties at the lovely old 
houses on the Thames, the drives on Sir Charles’s drag, the dinners 
at Richmond. It was something above and beyond all these, some- 
thing quite vague and indescribable, like the odor of ripe fruit and 
of summer roses which seemed to be thrilling in the air around her. 
And quickly, oh, so quickly, her enchanted week was drawing to 


58 


CHERRY. 


a close! In spite of all her resolutions, Cherry dreaded to think of 
her return home; ot Frances and her cold looks and ways; of the 
dreary breakfasts and dinners at which so few words were spoken; 
ot the long dull days in Eden Row, when brother and sister were 
both out and she sat alone for hours, eating her luncheon of bread 
and butter and listening to the ticking ot the clock, or to Susan 
singing to herself over her kettles and pans. 

“ i won’t think of it now, at any rate,” the child thought, as she 
finished her affectionate little letter, and addressed it in her very 
neatest hand; “ it will be bad enough when it comes.” And, jump- 
ing up, she ran to the piano and began to play a waltz, and to sing 
it aloud with vague words of her own composition— 

“ Lovely London, I adore you; 

Dear old Brook Street, how I iove you!” 

That was the burden of her song, but somehow the sound of her 
own voice in the big empty room sobered her, and she stood up 
again and flitted restlessly out on to the balcony. 

She looked up at the stars and the black roofs and spires crowd- 
ing against them, and she listened to the muffled roar of the distant 
streets, and to the roll ot one or two carriages which drove, with 
flashing lamps, through that on which she looked down from her 
perch among the boxes of giant mignonette. 

It was hardly dark, strewn though the sky was with innumera- 
ble stars; the warmth and languor of the June night was all round 
her, and through it she could feel the throbbing of the mighty 
heart ot London. It saddened her. She felt very small and insig- 
nificant in that great empty house— a little cruel ache, a sense of* 
loneliness and waiting crept chilly through her veins. But, oh, it 
would not do to be melancholy when she had only four days more 
of London left! 

An hour later Sir Charles, who had, at the last moment, basely 
contrived to evade the family solemnity, and who had dined at his 
club, let himself into the house in Brook Street with his latch-key, 
and walked deliberately upstairs into the drawing-room. He had 
resolved, after an evening ot painful cogitation, to follow Mrs. 
Lancaster’s advice, and to put his fate to the test before he slept 
that night. His heart was thumping under his dress-clotlies like a 
school-boy’s. He hoped that he should find Cherry alone. Could 
there be a better opportunity? 

The drawing-room door was halt open, and he could see a white 
dress moving in the inner room, beyond the old tapestry 'portiere. 


CHERRY. 


59 


Sir Charles softly closed the outer door, and crossed the half-lit 
room. Cherry did not hear him; she was very busy about some- 
thing or other as he peeped round the heavy cuitain. 

The girl had evidently been ransacking some of Lady West’s old 
finery. She had an antiquated brocade train pinned round her 
slender waist, and a bunch of white feathers stuck in her dark hair, 
and she was trailing all this splendor behind her in a very stately 
manner as she crossed the floor to the ottoman in the center ot the 
room, against which she had propped up one of the cushions, hav- 
ing draped it in black and covered it with an old white tulle veil. 
Before this majestic image she paused, oourtesied deeply, anti ex- 
tended her hand, bending her plumed head to kiss it, with the 
utmost reverence and gravity. 

“ The pretty darling,” thought Sir Charles, bursting with sup- 
pressed laughter, “ I see what she is up to! This is a presentation 
at Court, ot course. 1 remember Blanche Lancaster was telling 
her all about it to-day at luncheon. Oh, me, what a child— what a 
perfect child she is still!” 

That thought killed his laughter, and it was with a sober face 
enough lie continued to watch her antics. What right had he to 
trouble her simplicity and sweet unconsciousness with any talk of 
man’s love and longing? Who was he that he should dieam of 
wearing that lovely bud of maidenhood in nis blase bloom? 

When Cherry was tired of playing the debutante , and of announc- 
ing herself— in a deep voice meant to represent that of the orthrdox 
court official— as '* Lady Cherry Vanbrugh,” when she had practiced 
her courtesy often enough, and had succeeded in backing awayTrom 
the pillow without tumbling over her train, then she proceeded to 
reverse the characters in her comedy. 

Off came the feathers and on went the black drapery and the 
white veil. She took her stand royally before the ottoman, with a 
chair by her side, which was evidently intended to represent the 
Princess of Wales, and proceeded to receive, and not to render, 
homage. She had been told by Mrs. Lancaster that Her Gracious 
Majesty was wont on occasions to take shrewd notice of the ladies 
who were presented to her, and to make remarks upon their looks 
and bearing. 

“ Good, my daughter,” Sir Charles heard Queen Cherry say, 
something in the fashion of Gertrude in “ Hamlet,” the only royalty 
with which Miss Vanbrugh’s visit to London had made her familiar. 
“ Methinks yonder damsel in the snowy robe did bend before us 
with unwonted reverence. Let her approach,” With a dignified 


CHERRY. 


60 

wave of the royal hand— “ Damsel, your queen is well pleased with 
you. Ask her a boon and she will grant it.” 

“ May it please your majesty,” said Lady Cherry Vanbrugh, who, 
with another deep couitesy, had approached the presence, having, in 
fact, faced the ottoman instead of standing with her back to that 
emblem of England’s throne, “ all 1 ask is, that Frances may he 
married immediately to a duke with lots of money, and that Hem y 
and 1 may live happy ever after.” 

Henry! Sir Charles started as it he had been stung. Who was 
Henry, and how was it he had never heard of him before? A mor- 
tal coldness fell upon hi3 leaping heart. 

“ I— I have no right to play the spy upon that child,” he thought, 
clinching his hands and breathing hard; and, without an instant s 
pause, he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door 
hastily behind him. 

Cherry heard the sound and blushed scarlet. 

“ if any one should come in and see me dressed up?” she cried, 
beginning to pull off her finery with many anxious looks at the door. 

“ 1 did not think they could be home so soon. It is hardly ten 
o’clock.” 

She was eagerly gathering her wardrobe in both arms, and wait- 
ing for them to come int3 the room. A minute— two passed, as she 
stood, with her arms full, listening and smiling, but no one came; 
the house was still as quiet as it had been all the evening. The girl 
dropped her bundle of finery and sat down wearily, all the color 
dying out of her face. 

“ Oh, it is dreadful,” she thought, “ to be always listening for 
him! What shall 1 do when 1 am in Eden Row, where he will 
never come at all? Oh, it is so lonely here, and 1 can’t play by my- 
self!” And she burst into a passion of sudden tears. 

Perhaps if Sir Charles had seen them, or noted how heavily the 
child heaped up her finery again to be carried upstairs, looking so 
much paler and less childish as she did so; if be had still been be- 
hind the portiere then, perhaps he would not have gone out again 
that night, to stay out until long after Lady West had come home 
from her dinner-party, and all the house in Brook Street was fast 
asleep. 

Even next morning, when Cherry came down-stairs, he was not 
there. There was a little note for his mother, and in the note a 
pleasant message for their tittle guest; but it said that Sir Charles 
had been compelled to run down to Cowes again for a day. so that 
they need not expect to see him until the following morning. The 


CHERRY. 


61 


clay turned out to mean four clays, and Cherry did not see him 
again until the morning fixed for their return to Lowford, when Sir 
Charles arrived in time to see them all off by the train. 

“Oh, Charley- boy 1“ said Pussums, kissing her father with 
wounded air. “ Why did you run away and leave us? Cherry 
mine has not enjoyed the end of her holiday one bit!’ 

“ Indeed, yes!’’ interposed Cherry hastily, her sweet little lace as 
red as a rose. “ 1 have enjoyed it all. Every one has been very 
good to me!” 

“ But you are glad to go back to Lowford and to Henry?” Sir 
Charles asked, smiling kindly down on the little thing. During his 
four days’ solitude he had made up his mind that he must not 
dream any longer of winning Cherry’s love. “ No doubt they are 
all longing to have you back.” 

All her blushes faded. 

“ Yes,” she answered gently; “ I am glad, of course, to go back 
to Henry.” Then she held out her little hand on the platform. 
“ Good-bye, ” she said with great simplicity. “1 have been very 
happy in London. 1 shall remember it all my life!” 

Sir Charles sighed, blindly mistaking the girl’s emotion and 
changing color. But, even as he was about to let her go, he held 
the little timid hand warmly pressed in his own, and his lips parted 
eagerly. He seemed about to speak. Cherry’s heart began to beat; 
but just at the same moment the whistle screeched, and Lady West 
bundled the two children into the carriage. 

They saw Sir Charles standing hat in hand, and looking after the 
train as it steamed slowly out of the station. 

******** 

When the carriage which had met them at the station stopped at 
tne iron gate, Lady West and Pussums kissed Cherry again and 
again, and the little thing got out, feeling strangely nervous and 
lonely. 

“ Y'oii must be sure to come to us very soon, remember, my 
love!” said Sir Charles’s mother cordially. “ We shall miss our 
litlle companion very much!” 

As for Clementina she held her playfellow so tightly round the 
throat that Cherry was almost choked. Her eyes filled up as she 
stood and watched them drive away. She was in no hurry to knock 
at the door; she knew very well that it wanted an hour yet to din- 
ner-time, and that there would be nobody at home except Susan, 
and the cat. But to her surprise she found Miss Beauclerk in the 


CHERRY. 


02 


parlor, surrounded by dresses made and unmade, and, in attendance 
upon her, a person who had pins stuck in the body of her gown. 

Frances gave Cherry her hand, and asked her whether she had 
enjoyed herself, and then she calmly continued her discussion with 
the dress-maker as to the relative merits of fringe and lace as a trim- 
ming for the dress then in process of construction. Poor Cherry 
looked on, uncomfortable and surprised. 

•* i— I hope Henry is quite well?” she faltered out, not venturing 
to sit down, since every chair was covered with silks and satins of 
gorgeous hue. What could Frances want with such raiment? she 
wondered. 

41 Henry!” Miss Beauclerk repeated absently, her eyes fixed upon 
the glass, in which she was following the dress- maker’s movements. 
44 1 really do not know; 1 have not seen him since the day you left 
for London. ” 

“ Not seen him?” Cherry gasped. “ Where has he gone, then? 
Is he at Northport by himself?” 

44 1 have no idea. 1 only know that he has not been home, or at 
the office, for a week.” 

Then Cherry knew that it was Henry she had seen in the Park, 
and in the streets as she drove by. It had been no fancy. He had 
followed her. The poor child turned cold, she hardly knew why. 

‘‘And my letters?” she stammered. She knew now why they 
had never been answered. 

44 Your letters? 1 believe Martha carried them into the study, as 
you were pleased to call the back-parlor. No doubt you will find 
them there still. The sleeve a little tighter, Miss Pinkerton; let it 
follow the line of the arm exactly.” 

Cherry felt more and more bewildered and in the way. Perhaps 
Martha could tell her what it all meant. Wearily she pulled off her 
hat and gloves, and went into the little sunshiny kitchen. Old 
Martha was shelling peas at the window. Outside the swing hung 
motionless in the evening air; the mignonette in the yard was giv- 
ing out its strong cool scent. 

44 Martha,” said Cherry, feeling very much inclined to cry, 44 what 
is the matter with everybody? And why is Miss Beauclerk having 
so many new dresses made? She will not tell me anything.” 

The old servant had stood up to drop a smiling courtesy to Miss 
Vanbrugh. 

44 If you please, Miss Cherry/ she said, 44 1 think Miss Frances 
is going to be married.” 

Cherry felt as if she had received a smart box on the ears, 


CHERRY. 


63 


“ To be married?*’ she echoed, not sure whether her home-com- 
ing were uot all an ugly dream. “To whom? When? Why, 
Martha, 1 have only been away a week, and— and there was nobody 
then.’’ 

“ No, miss, but the gentleman came the very day after you left. 
He asked to see Mr. Vanbrugh, Miss Cherry.” 

“ Papa?” The child turned pale. “Oh, Martha, who was he? 
Didn’t he know?” 

“No, Miss Cherry. He said he had come all the way from New 
Zealand to see Mr. Vanbrugh and his daughter, and he had been 
directed here.” 

“ Oh, don’t tell me any more, Martha!” the child cried, breaking 
down altogether, and rushing av r ay into the little study to cry to 
her heart’s content. 

Her grief sobbed itself away unnoticed ana unheeded, So many 
feelings were blended with the pang with which the mention of her 
father’s name had smote her that it seemed as if she could never 
cry enough to wash them all away. Some one who knew her father 
had come to see her, and was going to marry Frances, whom he 
had known only for a few days! And Henry was away, and per- 
haps angry with her. Oh, it was all very puzzling and very mis- 
erable! Only yesterday she had been so happy, and so well taken 
care of, and now — 

At last, when it was almost dinner-time, and she could hear 
Frances opening the door for the dress-maker, and detaining her on 
the step with some parting injunction— at last Cherry dried her 
tears, and sat up straight in Henry’s big chair — the chair she had 
bought for him, and smuggled in one day with Martha’s help — to 
look about the room out of her poor swollen eyes. 

The dust lay thick everywhere. It was Miss Beauclerk’s protest 
— in that neat household — against Henry’s assumption of the sole 
right to the use of the room. Dust lay on the books, on the red 
pols in the window, where Cherry’s flowers drooped brown and 
dead for lack of water, on Henry’s violin-case, and on a little heap 
of seven letters— the records of seven unforgotten days— that lay be- 
side it. Cherry s lips trembled as she saw them. She remembered 
so vividly when and where each one had been written. On the en- 
velope of the third Sir Charles had drawn a sketch of Fluff in his 
new collar, and— ah, well, all that was over now! 

The girl had brought her present for Mr. Beauclerk— the splen- 
did watch and chain that Sir Charles had helped her one day to 
choose; and she laid it in its morocco-case beside the unread letters. 


04 


CHERRY. 


“ The best thing 1 can do now,’" she thought resolutely, “ is to 
open the window and dust the room. As to my poor flowers, I am 
at raid they will never revive.” 

She was bending over the pots, busily snipping oft the dead 
leaves, and watering the parched earth, when the door opened and 
Henry walked in, as quietly as though he had just returned from 
his office, and hung up his hat on its usual peg. Cherry dropped 
her scissors and her watering-pot with a little cry of pleasure and 
ran to meet him. 

“Oh, Henry V* she said, holding oat her two pretty hands. 

“ Where have you been? 1 am so glad you have come back! You 
won’t run away again, will you?” 

He held the little hands as if he would never let them go again. 
He patted them between his big old palms, with fond and inarticu- 
late murmurs; his tender, ugly face looked pale and worn; and his 
clothes dusty and neglected. Cherry bloomed before him like a lit- 
tle flower against a dingy wall. 

“ This is the last time you will leave me,” he said at last, de- 
vouring the pretty pale face with his hungry eyes. “ Cherry, you 
must promise me that! You see that I can not live here without 
you. 1 shall follow you wherever you go!” 

“Then it was you 1 saw in London!” Cherry cried; and her 
cheek was a shade pnler. “ Henry, you bad boy, why didn’t you 
come and see me — at the house, 1 mean?” 

He broke into his old bitter laugh, and sat down, passing his 
handkerchief across his heated forehead. 

“ Hot 1!” he said roughly. “ I only wanted to see for myself if 
you were happy. And L am satisfied. You were not. Couldn’t 
1 see the cloud on your face? Didn’t I tell you true, child? Isn’t 
it better to be here wiih me than flaunting about with great people 
who have a thousand other pleasures in this life?” 

Cherry hung her head. How was she to tell him that it was the 
thought of him that had brought the cloud upon her face? She felt 
as if a net were being drawn about her, and that 6he could not take 
a sten without stumbling. 

It hardly seemed honest not to speak out, and yet how could she 
bear to hurt the pool*, kind old fellow who had been so good to her, 
and to whom it seemed her fate to bring less pleasure than pain? 

“ I am glad you are pleased to have me back, dear,” she said in 
the pretty wheedling voice he loved. “ And 1 won’t go away any 
more, if you don’t wish it. 1 shall have to stay and take care of 


CHERRY. 


65 


you always, now; tor oh. Henry in an impressive whisper— 
“ what do you think? Fiances is actually going to be married !” 

****** * 

Mr. Mackenzie, the ivealthy farmer from New Zealand, had just 
six weeks when he landed in England in which to select a wife. 
His business demanded that he should return within a given time, 
and he had made up his mind that he would not go hack alone. 
Perhaps it was with some hope of being able to fall rapidly in love 
with William Vanbrugh’s daughter, whose portrait he remembered 
to have seen and admired a couple of years before, that, his busi- 
ness in London be : ng completed, he proceeded without delay to in- 
stitute inquiries as to his old friend’s whereabouts. 

His search ended in the discovery that poor Will had been in his 
grave for more than a year, and that “ the little gill,” of whom he 
had so often fondly spoken to Stephen Mackenzie, w T as away on a 
visit to some friends in London. It was quite uncertain w r hen Miss 
Vanbrugh would be back, he was assured by the stately hazel-eyed 
lady who received him with much graceful composure in the small 
parlor in Eden Row. 

Mr. Mackenzie felt that he had no time to lose, and that he must 
give up thinking of Will’s daughter. With some embarrassment, 
and a boyish blush that showed through all his wholesome tan and 
sunburn, he explained to Miss Beauclerk the object of his visit to 
Low ford. He was forty years old; he had always meant to marry 
an English girl and no other; he had a house and a fortune fit to 
offer any woman, be she whom she might; all that he warned to 
complete his prosperity and happiness was a handsome woman to sit 
at the head of his table, and drive in his carriages. A slight flush 
sprung to Miss Beauclerk’s face as she bowed in answer to Ibis ex- 
planation; it made her look very handsome indeed. 

Mr. Mackenzie, as he rose lo take leave, said to himself that she 
was the finest woman he had yet seen in England. He went away, 
and in a few hours knew ail about the Beauclerks, from the time 
of their father’s bankruptcy and suicide, down to the admirable de- 
votion shown by Frances to hex brother, a thankless sort of fellow, 
who w'as even now off on some spree or other, leaving his sister to 
work, as she had always done, for their living. Pity was added to 
admiration in honest Stephen’s mind. He asked himself that night, 
over his lonely dinner at the Crown, why he need go further afield, 
when there was a wife who seemed to be actually cut out for him? 

And meeting Frances the next day, on her way to one of her pu- 
3 


m 


CHERRY. 


pils, lie found her, in her becoming: bonnet, and calico gown, so 
much handsomer even than his recollection of her, that he hesitated 
no longer, but asked her then and there, on the shady side of the 
street, to marry him. 

Miss Beauclerk was not much surprised. She rapidly reviewed 
the situation. She had no parents to protect her, her brother was 
away; what had she to lose in breaking with the hard life she had 
led, uncomplainingly, for so many years? Was it likely she would 
ever have such a golden opportunity offered to her again? She was 
certainly not getting younger. But who would assist her, now, in 
her need? The lady whose daughters she was on her way to teach 
, had always been kind to her. Would she?— Miss Beauclerk mused 
at the lady’s door. 

“ Come back in half an hour, Mr. Mackenzie,” she said quietly. 

“ I will present you to Mrs. Murgatroyd, and give you my an- 
swer.” 

“ 1 am prepared with credentials that will satisfy her, I’ll war- 
rant,” returned Stephen Mackenzie as quietly. “ And I’ll be very 
good to you, Miss Beauclerk, it you will have me.” 

And a few days later, in Mrs. Murgatroyd’s drawing-room, he 
w?is accepted. There was little time to lose. Mrs. Mackenzie’s 
trousseau was to be ordered in Paris during her honey-moon, but 
certain preparations were necessary before the wedding could take 
place, and these were at once commenced under the supervision of 
good natured Mrs. Murgatroyd, who was never weary of talking to 
her friends about what she called this ” romance of real life.” 

Poor Henry’s angry amazement, when he heard the facts, affected 
his sister but little. Her mind was too entirely absorbed in her own 
affairs. Mr. Mackenzie w T as absent for a few days, making the 
final arrangements for their voyage to ISlew Zealand, but in a week 
he was to be back to claim his bride. 

“ And Cherry?” Henry asked abruptly. “ What is to become of 
Cherry if you desert us both in this heartless fashion?” 

“ Cherry? Cherry must take care of herself, L suppose,” his sis- 
ter returned calmly, “ as 1 have done ever since 1 was eighteen. She 
will go to her mother's relations, no doubt, unless indeed you intend 
to marry her.” 

Henry turned upon her with an oath; he was as white as death. 

“ You know that that is impossible!” he said with livid lips. 
“ But you can go your way, and leave us; 1 will do my best to take 
care of her when you are gone!” 

Miss Beauclerk felt that she was meeting with the usual ingrati- 


CHEEKY, 


67 


tude from her brother. It seemed to her that she was behaving ex- 
tremely well. She had settled upon him, with Mr. Mackenzie’s per- 
mission, the little old house in Eden Row, and the income derived 
from her godmother’s legacy, which, with his own salary, would 
enable Henry to live in their accustomed manner, though not to in- 
dulge in idleuess, or such absurd f leaks as he had occasionally 
broken out into. It Cherry was willing to marry him, her small 
fortune would of course be an addition to his means. 

And so Prances Beauclerk was given away by Mr. Murgatroyd to 
Stephen Mackenzie, and sailed with a tranquil conscience for her 
new home; nor was she ever seen again by her brother, or the 
daughter of poor Will Vanbrugh. Lady West was for carrying 
little Cherry off to the Crescent at once, but the girl steadily resisted 
all temptation, and declared that she had promised never to leave 
Henry any more. 

“ You know, dear Lady West,” she explained, blushing over her 
new importance, “ there is no one but me now to order the dinner, 
and pay the bills, and see that Henry does not set fire to the house 
with his pipe. It would never do to leave him by himself. He 
would forget to eat any dinner, poor dear old fellow, or to take his 
umbrella when it rained.” 

“ But you can not live in that house alone with him, my love,” 
urged Sir Charles’s mother kindly. “ iou know you are no rela- 
tion to Mr. Beauclerk, after all, and you are too young.” 

But Cherry did not understand. 

“ 1 can’t leave him,” she pleaded steadfastly. “ Please don’t ask 
me, dearest Lady West, for it breaks my heart to refuse. 1 know I 
gave way before, but 1 will not this time. It makes Henry too un- 
happy.” 

And Lady West saw that she must take the matter into her own 
hands, and appeal to Henry Beauclerk’s sense of propriety. But 
she resolved that she would first consult her son, who was daily 
expecled at the Crescent. 


CHAPTER VI. 

The days were longer and lonelier than ever in Eden Row, it 
seemed to poor little Cherry, though Frances had never taken much 
notice of her, or tried to make her happy. But at least, while Miss 
Beauclerk was at home, she had had her visits to the Crescent to 
look forward to; the long idle happy mornings with Lady West 
and Pussums; the feeling of being watched for there; the delight- 


68 


CHEEKY. 


ful friendly luncheons, and jokes, and games that awaited her in 
the big comfortable house. 

She sat and remembered these days now, with an incessant wist- 
ful aching in her childish breast. She thought of them regretfully 
as “ the old days ” when slie was happy; before she had given that 
promise to Henry never to leave him; before she had met Sir 
Charles West, and fallen into that foolish weary way of listening to 
every footfall that broke the silence of the old passage. The foot- 
steps never paused at the door, above which the lamp swung among 
the ivy. Sir Charles, who had been so merry and so kind, had for- 
gotten all about her, it seemed. He had failed to follow his mother 
to Lowford, as it had been arranged that he would. Every Sunday 
little Cherry’s heart beat painfully as she walked into church with 
Henry, and looked at Mr. Fordyce’s pew, where, besides the famil- 
iar bald head of Henry’s employer, there would be only Lady 
West’s Paris bonnets and Clementina’s floating hair lo be seen. 

She had almost given up hoping lo see any one else there— the 
broad shoulders and close-cropped fair head, and immaculate Lon- 
don coats that she remembered so well. At least she thought she had; 
but she could not help looking and watching. And she lay awake 
at nights, fretting, recalling, longing, until her health gave way, 
and she went about her little housewifely duties with two red spots 
burning in a pale lace, and two dark eyes shining with unnatural 
brightness. 

At first little Clementina had come to Eden Row, now and then, 
to play with her old friend, and to swing in the yard; but Cherry 
saw plainly enough that Henry had b'jen disturbed and annoyed 
when he heard of these visits; so she gave up even this pleasure. 

When the sultry August weather came, Cherry used to sit in the 
dark little house and pant tor air. Henry made a point of taking 
her out every evening when he got back from the ollice, but the 
girl soon grew tired, and would beg to be taken home again, when 
she would lie on the sofa, smiling at Henry’s anxious old face, and 
assuring him, whenever he looked up, that she w T as greatly inter- 
ested in the German book he was reading to her. 

Then she grew suddenly worse, and they had to send for the 
doctor. Poor Henry’s heart stood still with terror. What could he 
do for his darling— he, so clumsy and stupid, and inexperienced? 
Why, even old Martha in the kitchen was a better nurse, and knew 
more about sick people’s ways than he. The poor fellow hung his 
head when Lady West came to look after her little friend. 

" Ah, Mr. Beauclerk,” she said, not unkindly, “ why won’t you 


CHERRY. 


G9 


let us take care of her for you? She is suck a delicate little thing 
to be lett all day alone; she needs h woman’s hand about her.” 

“ 1 do my best tor her,” poor Henry mumbled out, looking up 
meekly from under his shaggy brows at the fine lady, as he was 
calling Lady West in his thoughts. “ Cherry knows that 1 do, and 
she is contented. She— she is not really ill— she will soon be all right 
again, won’t she?” 

His accent — the piteous look of his ugly face, went to Lady 
West’s heart, 

‘ She is young,” she answered gently. “ You must let me help 
you to nurse her. And, when she is better, you will please lend her 
to us now and then, Mr Beauclerk; she needs a change. Not 
that Cherry complains; no, indeed. But—” 

” Do as you like?” he blurted out roughly; and he turned on his 
heel and left the room. 

Cherry would have refused to go to the Crescent, when she got 
better, if Henry himself had not insisted on it. 

" Go, my little Cherry,” he said, in his rugged and tender voice. 
“ I am but a clumsy nurse for you, child. But you forgive me for 
that, and you will come back? My dear, it is so little I can do for 
you; and they can do so much. But if it was my life you wanted, 

I would give it as cheerfully.” 

She took his big trembling hand in both her weak little palms, 
and laid her cheek against it. 

‘‘1 will come back,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “ They 
are very kind, but my home is here with you.” 

ibs the carriage drew near the house in the Crescent, her heart 
was beating in the old troubled way. She did not know whether 
she should see Sir Charles or not. She said to herself that she had 
almost forgotten his face — the beautiful clear-cut face with the gen> 
tie, laughing eyes — she thought that if she could see it once again 
she would stop thinking of it so much. It was so miserable to be 
perpetually haunted by one face. 

But there was no Sir Charles in the Crescent. He had been down, 
and was gone again. He did not care to see her, Cheriy thought, 
as Lady West carried her oft to her own room to be petted and to 
rest, and be adored by Pussums. She did not know what a sharp 
struggle between inclination and duty Pussums’s father had gone 
through before he decided on going away. He, too, had been 
haunted by one face ever since Cherry had left Brook Street, and 
he was a good deal ashamed of his infatuation. More than once he 
Lad tiled to confess the state of his feelings to his kind old mother, 


CHERRY. 


70 

but he could not pluck up the necessary courage, lie thought every 
one would laugh at him tor having fallen in love, like a school- 
boy, with his little girl’s playfellow, and, being still firmly of the 
opinion that if little Cherry could be brought to marry him, it 
would not be for love, he felt that he could better bear to let her go 
with all her sweet and childish graces, than to secure his own desire 
at the cost of her better interests. 

In the warm home atmosphere of the Crescent, Cherry got better, 
steadily enough, of her illness. But, when she was fairly convales- 
cent, she seemed to have left her childhood behind. Pussums hoped 
that when her little playfellow grew stronger she would take the 
old pleasure in their games and happy nonsense together, but Cherry 
knew that she had done with those childish delights forever. 

Lady West thought it was prettier than ever to see the two to- 
gether. A quaint little maternal air had taken the place of Cherry’s 
madcap ways with the little girl. She began to teach Pussums her 
letters, and set her a handkerchief to hem. Clementina did not get 
through many stitches at a time, but she liked to sit by Cherry’s 
sofa, and be instructed. At such times they had long whispered 
talks together. A marked improvement became noticeable in Miss 
Pussums’s behavior; she was more tractable, and gave less trouble. 

Sir Charles read of all these simple liome-doings in his mother’s 
letters. He was in Scotland, and grouse were plentiful; but the 
thought of those two innocent heads, bending over a spelling-book 
together, came many a time between him and his sport. 

“ It is a pity,” his mother wrote, “ that you can. not run down 
for a day or two before Cherry goes home; I am afraid we shall 
soon have to give her up. She is almost herself again now, and 
Mr. Beauclerk grudges her to us, 1 can see. The feeling she has 
for that most uninteresting man is really surprising, poor child.” 

Henry had conquered his shyness so far as to call once or twice, 
though he refused to see any one but Cherry, He brought her word 
of her birds and flowers; he told her wistfully how lonely the house 
was without her. When he went away Lady West found Cherry 
nervous and trembling, talking about going home, but clinging to 
ber with a surt of convulsive fondness. 

ss My love,” the good-natured lady said, “ 1 wish we could keep 
you altogether,” Upon which the tears that were brimming in 
Cherry’s dark eyes rolled over, and ran down the pretty pale cheeks. 

” What would poor Henry say to that?” she cried, laughing 
somewhat hysterically. “ 1 think he has been very patient and good 
to spare me for so long,” 


CHERRY. 


71 

>£ You are very fond of Mr Beauclerk, darling, are you not?” 
Lady West asked, kissing the tears away, as she laid her face down 
on the little nestling head, 

“ Indeed, indeed, I am.” 

“ If he asked you to marry him, Cherry— would you consent?” 
Cherry changed color. 

“ I think 1 could do anything in the world that would please 
Henry,” she said simply. “ He has been very good to me, Lady 
West. And he is so poor, and lonely, and unhappy.” 

The last day ot her visit came. Early the next morning she was 
to go home Pussums was to be allowed to dine down stairs that 
evening, and was to wear the broad crimson sash and ribbons that 
Cherry had bought for her. A few more hours only were left before 
night came, and good-byes must be said. Even old Fordyce de- 
clared that he was sorry Miss Cherry need leave the Crescent, where 
he was always pleased to see her pretty little face. 

She went upstairs very early to put on her white muslin gown. 
She thought she would like to go all over the house before any one 
else was down, and say good- bye to the rooms where she had been 
so very happy. She felt, somehow, as if she never should come 
back to the Crescent. Would it not he better, indeed, to stay away, 
lest it might be the tact of her presence there which was keeping 
Sir Charles from his little daughter all this time? 

“ 1 suppose men in the world always talk to you and look at you 
as he did,” the girl mused sadly as she went hitting a slim white 
shape, down the dark staircase to the drawing-room. “ Henry told 
me that Sir Charles once made Frances believe that he wanted to 
marry her, though he was engaged at the time to Pussums’s mother, 
I am glad I know that he only meant to be kind to me in his own 
house. It was my fault if he reminded me of Wilhelm Meister in 
the opera. He did not intend to talk like a lover; only like a friend,” 
Noiselessly and swiftly in her white gown Cherry ilitted fiom room 
to room; touching certain objects here and there with her little hot 
hands; pausing by a window, or in a corner, to recall some pleasant 
scene, laying her cheek down tor a moment on the hiocaded arm 
of Lady West’s favorite easy-cliair. 

In Lady West’s own sitting-room there hung, just over her dav- 
enport, a large and spirited portrait of Sir Charles, He had brought 
it down with him when he came, declaring that the old ones, if he 
might judge by little Miss Vanbrugh’s impressions, must be even 
greater libels than photographs usually are Many a time before, 
during her visit, Cherry had stolen in to have a look at the hand- 


CHETIRYo 


72 

some good-natured face, which was hung just on a level with her 
own. How could she ever have thought him cold and stern? she 
wondered now. Trembling, she took a rose from her belt, and laid 
it on the ledge of the desk which stood below. Lady West would 
never know who had laid it there. It was only to say good-bye to 
him forever. She would have turned away then, but the eyes of 
the picture seemed to follow hei and hold her fast.. She stood and 
looked back at them, and a sudden flush began to burn in her pale 
cheeks; then, bending forward with a rapid impulse, she kissed the 
photograph on its unconscious lips. 

At the very same instant, she felt herself caught from behind in 
two strong gentle arms, and heard Sir Charles speak her name in a 
passionate whisper. If he had any doubt left as to her feeling for 
him, it vanished at sight of the sudden glory of joy that illuminated 
the girl’s face. How could she help uttering that low cry of de- 
light? Sir Charles was there, as if in answer to the passionate un 
uttered yearning of her heart; not his picture merely, but his warm 
living breathing self, w T hose eyes were looking deep into her eyes, 
as he held her with tender force against him, whose lips were cover- 
ing her lips and her eyes and hair with fast- falling kisses, whose 
voice was thrilling her with fond inarticulate murmurs. 

“My little love!” he said at last, holding her still, but drawing 
back his head to look down at the rose red face on his breast. “ L 
do not deserve such happiness, but I thank Heaven for it with all 
my heart and soul! Cherry, tell me! It is so hard to believe it. I 
am such a good-for-nothing fellow; do you really care for me a 
little? Will you marry me, my dear, and live with Pussums and 
me always?” 

He saw a change come' over her face. She closed her dark eyes 
wearily. 

“ No,” she said quietly; and she put a little shaking hand up to 
his shoulder, and laid her head down there again. 

“ Cherry!” he cried, startled. 

“Yes, I know! 1 am very sorry. For 1 do love you, Sir 
Charles” — he pressed her closer with a sigh of relief — “more 
than 1 know how to tell you, 1 think, but 1 can not marry you.” 

“ Not it you love me?” Sir Charles put his own broad palm over 
the little hand on his shoulder. Darling, what can separate us it 
we are fond of each other?” 

She sighed, 

“ Henry,” she answered gently. 

“ Henry Beauclerk?” There was a note of disdain in Sir Charles’s 


CHEERY. 


?3 


voice. “ My little Cherry, you must leave al that to me. You are 
mine now, and do you think 1 will let any one take you for me?’' 

Sue rubbed her cheek softly against nis coat, and the little hand 
crept up higher and rested on his neck. 

“ 1 like to hear you say so,” she said; ” it is like the dieams I 
have often had!” 

” Dreams of me. Cherry?” Sir Charles whispered eagerly. 

“ Y 7 es; and you used to kiss me in them, and tell me that you 
loved me. 1 am glad it has come true, even for a little while. 1 
know it can’t last, and perhaps it is cruel to be glad, but I am— 
very, very glad!” 

“ You pretty child! And why can’t it last? Are not we engaged, 
Cherry darling, from to-day? What strange notions have you got 
into this dear little head?” 

“ 1 am thinking of Henry,” she said, again quietly, “ I will 
never do anything to make him unhappy, Sir Charles.” 

“ Not Sir Charles any more, dear! My wife must learn to call 
me by some sweeter name than that! And do you think of Mr 
Beauclerk before me?” — jealously. 

” Yes,” she answered sadly. ” 1 love you best; but you are like 
myself, and 1 think of you last, and of Henry before any one else in 
the world. I should be a selfish cruel girl, if 1 could ever forget 
what he has done for me!” 

** My darling 17 — Sir Charles was stih a little jealous in spite of 
her sweet assurances—” there is no need that you ever should for- 
get it; but how can our engagement make your friend unhappy?” 

“ Because 1 promised,” Cherry began with trembling lips. 

“ Promised— what?’ Sir Charles started back, still holding the 
little hands in his, and eagerly searching her face. ” Not— not 
that you would marry him, Cherry; do not say that — 1 — ’ 

” No,” she answered simply. ” He has never spoken of such a 
thing He has been in love with Melissa Gartli for a great many 
years. 1 mean that 1 promised 1 would never leave him any more.” 

“ Oh, is that alll” Sir Charles broke into a little laugh of intense 
relief, and drew her to him again. ” That is a promise that most 
little girls make to their friends, but they are always expected to 
break it some day,” 

“ Oh, you do not understand,” pleaded Cherry earnestly. ” He 
will not let me marry any one. That is wliat 1 should have told 
you at first; but 1 was so happy that I could not!” 

She began to cry— she was weak still, and nervous. 

Sir Charles gently dried the long dark lashes. He did not feel 


u 


CHERRY. 


very much alarmed at the prospect of Henry Beau clerk’s opposi- 
tion. He was falling deeper and deeper in love every moment. 
After his weary weeks of suspense and self- torment, it was like a 
dream to be standing there with his arms about Cherry, her lovely 
little face upturned to his, and to be listening to her artless and 
passionate confessions. 

“ Darling,” he said fondly, “ we will see whether we can not 
melt the heart of this terrible guardian of yours/’ 

“ But he is very kind and gentle,” she urged. “ He is not ter- 
rible at all. Sir Charles.” 

“ Sir Charles again 1 Cherry is that what you are going to call 
me when 1 take you home to the Hall?” He felt her start, and saw 
her blush, though the anxious look did not quit her face; and, in a 
lower, fonder voice, he whispered, 14 Will you say it when w^e sit at 
breakfast together, Cherry ; and you are pouring out my tea for me, 
or when we are walking to church and Pussums is running on be- 
fore after the butterflies? Will you say, * Sir Charles, how that dar- 
ling child does grow!’ Will you?’ 5 — -with a gentle little shake 
There was no answer, but poor little Cherry’s breathing had quick 
ened. “Think how often you will iun to meet me with a kiss 
when 1 come home tired after a hard day’s shooting, and how 
badly ’ Sir Charles ' and kisses will go together. You foolish, 
sweetest little Cherry, call me Charley, and tell me again that you 
love me!” 

The kind happy voice— the masterful clasp— the pretty home- 
pictures he was conjuring up! 'The girl looked wildly round her, 
feeling liow vain it was to struggle in his arms, and at last, with a 
great gasp of relief, she heard the dressing-beil resound through 
the silent house. 

“ By Jove, 1 suppose 1 must run away!” cried Sir Charles re- 
luctantly. “Oh, darling, how happy you have made me! Wliat 
will Pussums and my mother say! It is a shame to keep the good 
news from them until after dinner; but me must, there is no 
time.” 

And so with a last gentle kiss he took himself away. 

But when he came down stairs, having dressed with all possible 
speed, he found no Cherry— only a little note which the butler 
banded to him, and which told him that Cherry had gone home. 

“Do not tell Lady West and Pussums,” the girl wrote. “I 
could not make you understand really, but 1 know that Henry will 
not consent, so there will be nothing to tell.” 

Bafiled aud vexed, Sir Charles made immediate inquiries. JMo 


CHERRY. 


TO 

one had opened the door for Miss Vanbrugh or had seen her leave 
the house. The little thing must have walked to Eden Row alone, 
in the dusk, in her white dress. 

“ What hold has that man got over her?” thought the lover hot- 
ly. “ Is he coward enough to try to frighten a helpless child like 
that?” 

He found Cherry sitting quietly in the parlor at Eden Row. She 
had put on her little every-day gown, and was sewing at the table 
while Mr. Beauclerk read aloud. 

Sir Cliarles’s'recognition of Henry was remarkably curt. He went 
straight up to the girl, who at his entrance had started her to her 
feet, uttering a taint cry. 

“Cherry,” he said, with tender reproach, “did you think that 
I could sleep to-night without knowing that you were safe? Why 
did you run away from us, my dear? Don’t you know that my 
only wish — our only wish— is to make you happy?” 

Cherry looked piteously from her lover’s ardent face to Henry, 
who had closed the book, and was nervously turning it round and 
round in his shaking hands. 

“I thought 1 ought to come home,” she said. “Lady West 
would not be angry with me if she knew. Oh, Sir Charles, Henry 
wants me most!” 

Henry said nothing, but his haggard eyes flashed a swift look of 
gratitude at her. They had been scowling all this time at the hand- 
some and well dressed London man, whose presence seemed to make 
the little parlor smaller and dingier than ever. Sir Charles was 
quite at his ease. 

“ ft is with Mr. Beauclerk that 1 desire to speak,” he answered 
gently. “ Do you mind leaving us together for a few minutes, 
Cherry? Don’t be alarmed, dear,” he hastened to add, seeing how 
she trembled. “ I am only going to inform your guardian— if that 
is the title Mr. Beauclerk claims— of our engagement. And — ” 

Poor little Cherry dropped her work, and ran to Henry’s side. 
He had started up, too, as Sir Charles spoke, and was breathing 
heavily and fast. 

“ 1 told Sir Charles 1 could not be engaged, dear,” she urged 
hurriedly. “ He will tell you so himself. 1 know what I have 
promised, and I will keep my word!” 

Henry laid his big hand tenderly upon the pretty uplifted head. 

“My poor little Cherry,” he murmured hoarsely. “1 did my 
best to spare you this pain, but 1 suppose it can not be helped. 
Go now, my child ” — he forced a smile upon his sad and disturbed 


CHERRY. 


76 


face as he put her from him. “ Leave me for a while with this 
gentleman, and let me hear w T hat he has to say.” 

She turned her lips to one of his shaking hands. 

“ Whatever you decide, 1 will be satisfied,” she said gently, and 
she went away at once. 

She did not even look at Sir Charles, who had been devouring her 
pale young beauty with his eyes. The two men were left alone. 
There was a pause of some moments. Sir Charles maintained the 
same unruffled composure. Henry Beauclerk was undergoing some 
sharp inward struggle. It was visible in the working of his ugly 
face, and in the uncouth gestures and twitchings which were 
habitual with him when he was strongly moved. At last he spoke. 

“ 1 think 1 understand,” he said abruptly. “ There is no need of 
many words. You want to marry Miss Vanbrugh?” 

“ Yes.” 

Henry wiped the damp from his forehead and went on— 

“ 1 have no power to prevent your doing so ” — Sir Charles 
bowed slightly. “ But 1 — I— believe, when you have heard what 
I have to tell you, that you will think twice before you repeat your 
offer.” 

“ Let me hear what you have to tell, sir, by all means.” 

Henry was turning and twisting the book about again; he did 
not look up as he spoke; the lamp shone upward on his face and 
showed it be ghastly pale. 

“ Cherry knows,” he continued, in the same hesitating and 
broken way, “ whether 1 have done my best, or not, to avert this 
sorrow from her. But girls are ignorant and helpless young creat- 
ures. It is not her fault if she has been flattered into forgetting the 
plain duty 1 have striven to impress upon her.” He paused, but 
there was no answer. Sir Charles was composedly waiting for him 
to proceed. ‘‘It has been my constant endeavor,” poor Henry went 
on, “ to teach her to be contented with the home I have to offer her, 
believing as 1 do, that it is the only one on which she can depend 
with safety in the future.” 

“ 1 am here to offer her mine,” Sir Charles said then. 

He could not conquer a certain feeling of repulsion with which 
Henry Beauclerk inspired him, and he spoke with a haughtiness 
that was very unusual in one so good-natured. 

“ 1 know ” — Henry was wiping his forehead again — “ and it is 
because of your offer that 1 consider it my duty to tell you certain 
facts about my poor— about Miss Vanbrugh’s family.” 

“ We are a long time coming to these facts, sir/* 


CHERRY. 


77 


Henry looked up, stung by the other’s continued stillness. 

“ They are soon told,” he said abruptly. “ Sir Charles West, 
the girl whom you wish to make your wife and the mother of your 
child is ” -he blurred out the words as if they hurt him—” is the 
daughter of a servant, whose relatives — a drunken shoemaker and 
his family— are now living in London, at no very great distance 
from your own house.” 

Sir Charles changed color. 

“ You have proof of this?” he demanded, quitting his nonchalant 
attitude, and looking roused at last. 

“ 1 have; undeniable proof. Cherry herself will confirm what 1 
have told you.” 

“ Cherry? She knows these relations?” 

•» She knows of them. She has never met them; but they were 
her only friends in the world when she came to live with my sister 
and me. Sir Charles ’’—poor Henry’s voice was shaken with strong 
emotion— ‘‘ my house, poor as it is, has been a safer shelter for 
Cherry than her own relations could have ofiered her. She might 
have lived here happily enough, if she had not been tempted away, 
and been dazzled by glimpses of a life above her station. Oh, leave 
her to me, to take care of, as her father charged me to do! She is 
young, and will forget you. Be generous, and go away.” 

Sir Charles did not answer. It seemed as if be had not even 
listened to Henry’s appeal. He had turned away to the window, 
where he stood looking out over Cherry’s pots of flowers, his arms 
folded, and his good-tempered brows knit. Then be suddenly 
wheeled round. 

“ I will not deny,” he said, ” that what 1 have just heard is pro- 
foundly distasteful to me. But I beg you to understand at once, 
Mr. Beauclerk, that it makes no difference in my feeling for Miss 
Vanbrugh. 1 love her,” he added with simplicity, ” and I would 
be proud to marry her if 1 weTe a duke, instead of the quiet coun- 
try gentleman 1 am.” 

The sharp sound of rent paper filled the room ; the book that 
Henry had been holding fell torn and coverless on to the floor. 

** You can not marry her,” he said in a constrained voice. Why 
will you not understand that— that it is impossible?’ 0 

“ But 1 repeat that I will!” returned the lover hotly. ” She has 
told me that 1 am not indifferent to her ”— a spasm crossed Henry 
Beauclerk’s pallid face—” and 1 see nothing in what you have told 
me that can cause me to forfeit my honor. 1 asked Miss Vanbrugh 


w 


CHERRY. 


an hour ago to be my wife. I repeat the offer fornWy L<V > j 
you, as you have constituted yourselt her guardian.” 

“You can not marry her,” Henry repeated, in t*n same con- 
strained voice. “ There is another bar between yor — ” 

“ Yrhat!”— Sir Charles started. “ In Heaven's ume, sir, speak 
out, and let us have done with mysteries. If you k/iow of anything 
which should prevent my marriage with your wud, speak out like 
a man, and let me know where 1 stand.” 

“ 1 would rather cut my tongue out than WP you,” Henry an 
swered betwepn his clinched teeth. ** 1 never meant that you, oi 
any one else in the wide world should knov it. I believed—;] udg- 
ing by my former experience of fine gentlemen such as you — that 
the knowledge of my poor child's low origin and disgraceful rela- 
tions would have been enough to turn yc a from your purpose, but 
it seems that 1 Was mistaken, and— a^4 you must be told the 
truth.” 

“ By George, sir, if you keep me rwch longer in this suspense, 
3 ’ll wring it out of you!” Sir Charles’s composure had disap- 
peared utterly. He faced the other nan with a dangerous gleam in 
his eye, and with a heightened coW. 

“ Spare your threats,” Henry answered sadly. “ Ah, Sir Charles, 
I say to you once again— do p £ ask to know! Be generous, go 
home to your little girl, and believe me, when I tell you that you 
will never marry Cherry Vant^ugh.” 

The blood stood still in Sir Charles’s veins. There was a strange 
weird melancholy in the pp^r fellow’s face, and it impressed him 
with a vague horror. 

“ Why not?” he asked mechanically, his voice sinking almost 
into a whisper. 

<5 Swear to me that yo ir -you will not repeat it,” Henry returned, 
still deadly pale in the lamplight. “ Swear to me that it shall re- 
main a secret buried if your heart and mine, the only living men 
who know it.” 

” 1 swear,” Sir Chares said. Then hurriedly — “ What is this 
secret? Why may no f 1 marry Cherry Vanbrugh?” 

“ Because—” Hem/ drew a step nearer, and uttered a few words 
in the ear of the young man, who staggered back as if he had been 
shot. 

“ This is true?” a e panted out. 

“ It is too true.” 

Half an hour la ijr, Cherry, who was sitting in her little chamber, 
across whose floor the flickering shadow of the lamp swung to and 


CHERRY. 


7.9 


fro, heard the door close behind Sir Charles and his footsteps die 
away along the old flagged passage. 

******* 

Sir Charles West’s hasty departure from Lowford that night was 
followed before many days by the sudden death of old Fordyce, an 
event which naturally led to many changes in the household at the 
Crescent. But, even in the midst of the distress and confusion 
which reigned around her, kind Lady West did not fomet little 
Che.ry, round whose neck Pussums clung, sobbing aud inconsola- 
ble, w T hen the time came for saying their last good-bye. 

“ I don’t think that we shall ever come back to the Crescent to 
live, my love, 5 ’ Lady West said to her pale little friend “Sir 
Charles dislikes Lowford so much. But you may be sure that, as 
soon as ever we return to England, Pussums and 1 will come and 
pay you a visit. And you must write to me, dear child, Y'ou 
must promise me, if anything should happen, to come straight to 
us— don’t forget. 

“ You are going to leave England?” Cherry faltered. 

Her poor little heart sunk within her at the thought. Though 
She knew that it did not really matter; though she had Sir Charles’s 
few lines of farewell hidden awa} r inside the bodice of her gown 
while she spoke. Could thousands of' miles separate her from him 
more utterly than his own written words? 

“ Yes, my love,” Lady West sighed. “ That is my son’s latest 
whim. He has taken a house in some out-of-the-way place in 
Brittany, and I believe we shall remain abroad for a year at least. 
It is too bad! Just, too, when Clem and 1 were looking forward to 
having you with us at the Hall for Christmas! 1 wish ” — fondly 
kissing the pretty wistful face — “ that we might carry you olf with 
us to France; but 1 suppose Mr. Beauclerk would not hear of it, 
and that it would really be too much to ask of him just yet.” 

For a year! Cherry felt that a year meant forever. She knew 
that Sir Charles would never come back, and that she should never 
be sent for to the Hall. Henry had told her— that night when she 
crept down from her little room after the footsteps died away — 
told her very gently and kindly that her lover was gone* and early 
the next morning Sir Charles’s note had been brought by one of the 
servants from the Crescent, 

“ My little Cherry, good-bye,” it said. “1 am going away; 1 
must not see you again. Mr. Beauclerk refuses his consent to our 
marriage, as you thought he would, and there is nothing for us but 


80 


CHERRY. 


to part. 1 shall love you all my life. May Heaven bless and keep 
you. Cherry. Try to torget me if you can.” 

She read it through again when she went home that afternoon 
from the empty house in the Crescent. And then, steadily drying 
her tears and washing the traces of them from her wan little cheeks, 
she went down-stairs to be ready to meet Henry. 

“ They are all gone now, dear,” she told him, smiling her pretty 
melancholy smile. “ We have only each other left.” 

But there was yet another change to be told, and Henry explained, 
somewhat hurriedly, that, owing to Mr. Fordyce’s death, and the 
transfer of the business into other hands, his own services would no 
longer be required at the office in Conyngham Lane, and he would 
be compelled to seek employment elsewhere. 


CHAPTER Vll. 

The year’s exile which Sir Charles had decreed was slowly ex- 
tending into two. Lady West’s heart yearned toward the Hall, and 
her rose garden and schools and poor people, but she would utter 
no complaint so long as her son seemed content to spend his time 
with her and his little girl, instead of rushing aimlessly about the 
world, as his custom had been during the life-time of old Mr. For 
dyce. She was too happy in his society, moody and irritable as he 
had undoubtedly grown since they left England— irritable especially 
on the subject of Lowford and everything connected with their 
life there. Even little Pussums had learned not to express her re- 
grets and longings for Cherry, too often, in her kind Charley- Doy’s 
hearing. 

” I believe my son connects the thought of that poor child with 
the slavery we all went through at the Crescent,” Lady West said 
sometimes to Sir Charles’s old friend, Mrs. Lancaster. 

Blanche was still a widow. During her travels she had stumbled 
on them, buried as they w T ere in their picturesque old chateau in 
Brittany, and had gayly begged for an invitation to spend some 
weeks with them before she went back to Clarges Street for the 
season. 

Sir Charles and I will promise not to flirt, dear Lady West/' 
she declared, laughing, on Ihe first day of her visit. “We have 
gone through that stage, and are sworn friends now for life.’ 

She had put on a Paris gown for dinner, and looked provokingly 
pretty as she delivered this challenge to her moody host. He did 


CHEKKY. 


81 


not seem to hear it. He was absently pulling the ears of a great 
wolf-hound that lay on the hearth-rug at his feet, and was staring 
into the blazing logs with melancholy eyes. 

Latei in the evening, when Lady West had gone to see Pussums 
tucked up in bed, Mrs. Lancaster summoned up all her audacity, 
and asked a question that brought a fierce gleam into Sir Charles’s 
heavy glance. 

“You never came and told me the result of your investigations 
two j^ears ago,” she said, as lightly as though her heart were not 
beating with something very like fear. “ What did that pretty 
little Cherry say to you, after all?” 

“ Mrs, Lancaster!” Sir Charles started up frowning and gnaw- 
ing his mustache. 

“ WelL you know you promised to tell me!” the pretty widow 
persisted, laying down her work, lest he should see how unsteady 
her hands were, “ Would she not have you, really, Sir Charles?” 

For a moment he looked as if he could have seized her and crushed 
her into silence; then, recovering himself, he broke into a short 
miserable laugh, 

“ Kd!” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and turning 
on his heel- “ she would not have me, as you see,” 

Blanche Lancaster looked after him as he left the room, and, as 
she looked, her eyes softened, and she sighed. 

“ 1 gave her her chance once,” she thought, going to the window 
to watch him as he whistled for his dog, and went off in the direc- 
tion of the stables. “ Something has kept them apart. I suppose 
she likes somebody else. Well, it is all over, evidently, and he will 
be happier with me than living such a life as he is living now!” 

Sir Charles did not appear in the salon again that night. His 
mother explained to their guest, with a little apology, that He often 
took long walks or rides at that hour, hoping by such means to con- 
quer the sleeplessness which had taken possession of him. 

Hide as far and as fast as he would, the young man could not 
escape from the fierce devil of wrath which had been aroused in him 
by Mrs. Lancaster’s questions. 

“How dared she speak her name?” he was saying to himself, 
over and over again, as he spurred his horse across the wide and 
desolate plains that stretched on all sides of the chateau. 

Had he given up home, and country, and buried himself alive in 
that foreign hole, to be insolently reminded by a mere stranger— so 
he called an old friend in his anger— of all that it was the object of 
his life to forget? If it were not that England held the child of his 


82 


CHEERY. 


unhappy love, would liis mother he sighing— as he knew she was, 
biavely though she tried to hide it from him— for the house whose 
memories had grown, a life-time strong and deep, about her heart? 
Would Pussums be growing up a stranger to those who had known 
her father from a boy? But if they were at the Hall, within easy 
reach of that little house in Eden Row, what could deter them— 
loving woman and loving child— from seeking out their little petted 
favorite? Would he himself have the strength to deny himself a 
sight of the sweet beloved face, the thought of whose pale and 
wistful looks kept him awake at night, and would not let him rest? 
He knew too welf that in distance lay his only safety. And Blanche 
•Lancaster, a woman he had once liked, could utter her name, her 
fondly cherished and forbidden name, as she might utter the name 
of the first sunburned peasant by the road-side. 

“How long is that woman going to stay?” he fretfully de- 
manded of his mother the next morning. 

Lady West colored, hesitating. Already she had begun to think 
that her former dislike of Mrs. Lancaster had been uncalled for; 
that Pussums decidedly got on better with her than of old; that she 
herself could forgive much to the woman— well-bred and amiable 
•—who would reconcile her son to his native land, and divert him 
from his rapidly increasing gloom. She had had other hopes, but 
they, she felt, had been unfounded, and Sir Charles had never really 
cared for Cherry. 

“ You don't dislike Blanche Lancaster, Charles?” she asked with 
secret anxiety. “ In the absence of any near neighbors, 1 really 
consider her quite au acquisition myself. And Pussums likes 
her.” 

“ I am a selfish brute,” groaned the young man, bending down 
to kiss his mother's forehead. “ Of course you are glad of a pleas- 
ant companion, dear. You must try to induce Mrs. Lancaster to 
spare us as much time as possible.” 

As he spoke, he saw his little girl and Blanche coming up the 
terrace-steps together, laughing, and sticking roses in Bevis’s col- 
lar; and Blanche’s hair shone golden in the sun. 

******* 

When two women put their heads together, w hen a man has his 
child’s happiness to consider, When the man is indolent and impres- 
sionable, and has buried the one serious passion of his life out of 
sight forever— what happens? 

Lady W est began to hope for the very best. Blanche Lancaster 
in London, in society, in the incessant whirl of town-life, was a 


CHERTIT. 


88 


very different being from Blanche Lancaster, simple, unaffected, 
and good temper personified, in a quiet French country-house. She 
was the life of the drowsy, sunshiny old place. She romped with 
Clem; learned to make all sorts of dishes from Nanou the cook, 
played bezique with Lady West; rode with Sir Charles, sung songs 
for him, and talked to him in the long light eveniags. Not about 
Cherry any more. She had been compelled to cause him that one 
pang, but now she knew all that she cared to know, and her care 
henceforth was 1o soothe, and not to wound her old friend’s feel- 
ings. It was a pleasant state of things for them all. Indeed, they 
had grown to look upon it as such a matter of course that Lady 
West was quite startled one morning to hear Mrs. Lancaster count 
the few remaining days of her visit. 

“ W'e had forgotten that you need ever leave us!” the mother 
cried, somewhat imprudently, and Blanche, laughing, but coloring 
deeply too, declared that she had already trespassed only too long 
on dear Lady West’s kindness. 

“Must she go, Charles?” Lady West took courage to say, as 
their guest ran out ot the breakfast-room on to the terrace, with 
Pussums catching at her gown, and Bevis running and barking on 
before. “ My dear, 1 think 1 was unjust, once, to Blanche. I 
thought her frivolous and spoiled. But now— oh, Charles, I am 
sure she is very fond ot you and of Clem! And why shouldn’t you 
make a home for yourself again? Tou get on so well together. She 
is so very sweet-tempered.” 

Sir Charles was selecting a cigar with much care from his case. 

Would it make you happier, indeed — you and Pussums, moth- 
er— if Blanche Lancaster stayed?” he asked, without looking up. 

She laid a trembling hand upon his arm, but did not speak. r l’he 
young man lifted the kind hand and kissed it, and then, taking up 
his hat, he went out on to the terrace to light his cigar. He Could 
hear little Clementina’s voice calling to Bevis far down the prim 
poplar-alley, and Blanche singing the refrain of a little Breton song 
she had learned, willi her cookery, from Nanon. It was all very 
tranquil and home-like. He had made up his mind, at last, to do 
as his mother wished; but he was in no hurry. He believed that 
Blanche would say yes, and he would be grateful to her for saying 
it, but there was no hurry; and, as he followed the sound of the 
happy voices down the garden-alley, he leisurely struck a match 
and lighted his cigar. 

And then suddenly— he never could explain the feeling afterward, 
or account for it, or reason about it — suddenly, just as he came 


84 


CHERRY. 


within sight of Mrs. Lancaster, who was sitting on a bench with a 
Dig white umbrella over her head, an urgent thought of Cherry 
shot through his mind like a swift pang, and he knew that she 
wanted him, or -was in some danger. Somehow he did not leel 
surprised or excited, though the conviction was strong upon him. 
He only walked very quietly up to Blanche, and told her that he 
had come to say good-bye lor a few days, as he had been sum- 
moned, that moment, to England on business. 

“ It will be very kind of you/’ he added a little wistfully, “ to 
stay with my mother until I return.” He was wondeiing secretly 
w r hy s after those two years of misery, he could not have been left 
there, in the sunshine, to marry the pretty woman who had blushed 
at his approach. But he did not hesitate at all about goimr. 

Blanche Lancaster looked at him with a half -puzzled scrutiny. 

44 Will you come back?” she asked lightly, but sighing too. 

“ 1 will come back, certainly, as soon as 1 am free.” 

44 Ah!” She shook her head and turned a little pale, though she 
smiled. ‘‘1 think we had better say good-bye again, Sir Charles, 
and for more than a few days, this time.” 

******* 

Sir Charles found the house in Eden Row shut up. His heart 
was throbbing loud and fast as he opened the gate and entered the 
quiet old passage. How had he ever persuaded himself that he had 
forgotten Cherry? At sight of the prim old-fashioned windows, 
of the very knocker on the narrow door, the old pain and joy 
sprung into fiercest life within him. Her innocent pale face rose 
before him; he heard the ring of her girlish voice, and felt the shy 
touch of her hands about his neck, as he had felt them that night — 
that dreadful night!— that had separated them forever and ever. 
The young man shuddered in spite of himself as he recalled his last 
visit to the red -brick house in Eden Row. 

He knocked again — he had waited some minutes, lost in thought 
— but no one appeared in answer to his summons. He noticed at 
last that the house looked neglected and deserted. The windows 
were covered with dust and grime, the blinds were yellow, the steps 
untended. He Knocked for the third time, and then a little maid- 
servant came out of the next house, and told him that Mr. Beau- 
clerk had gone away, near upon two years ago, she thought. She 
did not know w’here, but w r ould ask her mistress, if the gentleman 
pleased. 

But the mistress could give him no information. She had heard, 


CHERRY. 85 

she admitted, that Mr. Beauclerk had sailed for New Zealand, 
where he had a sister very well married, but— 

Sir Charles thanked her, and turned away, and out at the iron 
gate, where the old lamp had just been lighted, and was glimmer- 
ing among the ivy, and across the windows of the room that had 
been Cherry’s. 

“ Why did 1 ever leave her?” the young man groaned. “ Why, 
in iny selfish cowardice, did I forsake her, not knowing how soon 
she might need a friend? Well, 1 will find her now, if I have to 
follow hei to New Zealand, and if this queer conviction lasts, which 
is every moment growing stronger, that she wants my help. It 
sounds romantic, 1 dare say, but it is none the less true, and I will 
be her brother, tardily enough, it 1 can be nothing else.” 

His inquiries at the office in Conyngham Lane and elsewhere led 
to no result; and there was nothing for it, he felt, but to go back to 
town, and start afresh. 

His heart was full of memories of Cherry. It seemed a year since 
he had followed the voices down the alley of the old Breton garden, 
resolving to ask Blanche Lancaster to be his wile. He knew, now, 
that there was only one woman in the world whom he loved, or had 
ever loved — the woman whom he must never marry. 

Only disappointment appeared to await him in London. He 
found himself baffled at every turn. He could discover no traces 
whatever of Henry Beauclerk and the girl he had called his ward. 
But still he lingered, putting oft his departure for the Continent 
from day to day, he did not know why. 

“ I believe 1 am afraid to go back and tell my mother and Pus- 
sums that I must go to New Zealand,” he thought sometimes. 

“ And that is what 1 shall have to do, if my advertisement leads to 
nothing, again, this week. That child is calling me still!” 

London was very full; but no one Knew that Sir Charles was in 
town. He had put up at a quiet hotel, determined not to let any- 
thing interfere with the purpose he had in view, and had carefully 
kept out of people’s way. What had he to do with the season and 
its gayeties, while his heart was heavy with that nameless haunting 
trouble that never left him day or ni^ht? 

The week passed, and his advertisement remained unanswered. 

“ 1 will go back to Laroque to-morrow,” he decided, drawing a 
long breath. 

He would have given worlds not. to undertake the voyage he was 
going to announce to Lady West and his little daughter, but he 
knew that he would go, if necessary. 


CHERRY. 


86 

It was a mild May evening, and the streets were thronged with 
carriages, as he turned from the door of his hotel, and mingled willi 
the stream of passers-by. He had various messages from his mother 
to deliver to the woman who had been left in charge of the house in 
Brook Street, but until the last moment he had shrunk, witn the 
greatest reluctance, from crossing the threshold. He dreaded to 
enter the empty liolland- shrouded rooms where he had first met the 
pretty child whom he had lost for evermore. He remembered their 
meeting so well. It came back to him as he walked; and he saw 
Cherry, in her white dress, running into the room where ha was 
falling asleep over his book, and startling him out of his dreams 
with the loveliest face his eyes had ever seen. 

“ if I had known,” the young man thought, shuddering in the 
mild evening air, “ would it have saved me from loving her? 

He remembered her pretty eager chatter, her artless and absorbed 
strumming on the piano; her questions with her eyes fixed gravely 
on him. 

“ She looked so sweet, and fair, and happy 1” Something like a 
sob rose in his throat. “ And she smiled at me, and blushed, and 
did not know— Heaven help her!’ , 

He was crossing the square now, and turning into Brook Street. 
A pretty face that he knew flashed past him in a carriage, out of a 
mist of white draperies. One or two of the houses were shut up; 
before another straw was laid down; music was issuing from the 
windows of a third, whose door was thronged with vehicles and a 
little crowd of on-lookers. 

At last he reached his own, whose shuttered windows looked 
blankly at him in the dusk as he passed before it thinking, remem- 
bering, rebelling. 

A woman, poorly clad, and a hoy, were standing at the railings. 
The woman seemed to be looking up at the empty balcony, but, as 
Sir Charles paused on the step, she drew back hurriedly and turned 
to go a, way. 

It was Cherry. 

Sir Charles never knew how long they stood there, holding each 
other’s hands, and looking into each other’s eyes. At sight of the 
child’s sweet and fading face he came near breaking down utterly. 

“ Cherry, my little Cherry,” he murmured at length, in hoarse 
slow- coming words, He had forgotten for a time all that divided 
them; he only remembered that she had been lost, and was now 
found. “ Cherry, l am here, you see; 1 have come to take care of 
you. You wanted me, did you not? You came here to find me? 


CHERRY 


87 


She shook her head. Her dark sweet eyes —there were black rings 
round them now — were still eagerly traveling all over his face, as 
though they could never satisfy themselves with looking. She did 
not seem surprised to see him. 

“ No,” she said, quietly leaving her hand in his. “I did not 
come to find you, Sir Charles, but her lip began to tremble— “ 1 
am glad, oh, very glad that 1 have seen you again to-day!” 

“ r Io-day— why to-day, dear? Why are you here alone, at this 
hour; it is not safe, my child; you should not run such risks.” 

A little smile brightened Cherry’s wan face. 

“I am not by myself,” she explained, pulling forward the lad 
who stood near her, and who had been shrewdly eying her friend. 
“ Sam is with me, you see. Sam is my landlady’s son. He knows 
his way quite well, and can take good care of me— can’t you, Sam?” 

Sam nodded. 

“ I’d like to see any harm come to Miss Vanbrugh, when I’m 
here, sir,” he said composedly; and Sir Charles resolved that Sam 
should presently receive such a lip as he had never dreamed of in 
his boyish philosophy. 

“ Sam is a good fellow,” he said heartily, and then, his voice 
sinking again—” But, Cherry, if you did not come to look for me, 
what are you doing here, and— and, my child, why are you in these 
clothes?” 

Cherry looked down, a little surprised, at her shabby gown and 
jacket. She had evidently grown accustomed to them. 

” These are the only things 1 have,” she answered, with her old 
direct simplicity. ” We are poor now, Sir Charles, Henry says. 
He has been ill, and could not work, and he would not spend any 
of my money. 1 have never thought about bujdng clothes.” 

” You are still in his care then?” Sir Charles asked, more and 
more puzzled. 

“ Ves ’’—quietly. ” Lady West and Pussums must not feel hurt 
because 1 did not write or answer their dear letters, Sir Charles. 
Henry did not wish me to do so. Are they ”~=-her face lit up 
eagerly—” are they here, too? Shall 1 see them again, before—” 

“Before what?” — Sir Charles held her hands closer when she 
would have drawn them away. “ They are not in town, Clieny. 
You must come back with me to my mother. ” 

She shook her head. 

” I see them every day,” she said simply, ” just by shutting my 
eyes. And— and you, too ” — faltering. ” You do not think it was 
wrong of me to come here, Sir Charles? 1 could not help it. 1 


88 


CHEERY. 


stole away with Sam while Henry was asleep. 1 wanted to see the 
house just once more.” 

“ Once moie? Cherry, are you, then, going away?” 

“ No. But after to-day everything will be so different. 1—1 am 
going to be married.” 

She spoke with a kind of dreary calm, and the young man, drop- 
ping her hands, drew back, amazed 

“ To be married?” he cried, in a hoarse whisper. “ Cherry— to 
whom, in Heaven’s name? And has Henry Beauclerk given his 
consent?” 

” It is to Henry 1 am going to be married,” the girl answered 
sadly; and Sir Charles reeled, and caught blindly at the wall, like 
one stricken with a dreadful blow. 

******* 

Sir Charles never remembered how they reached the house where 
Henry Beauclerk and he were to meet again. No doubt Cherry’s 
little protector, Sam, had brought them safely there. The young 
man was conscious of nothing but a dull sense of wonder why such 
a strange tragedy should have crossed his easy-going commonplace 
English life, and that of the pretty pale child at his side, the little 
thing who seemed born to be cherished and sheltered from danger 
in a loving home. 

He held her hand closely in his as they walked along; he felt as 
it he could never, never let it go again; and Cherry was quite still 
and happy. She did not know why he bad gone away, or what 
had brought him back; but tor an hour at least he was with her 
again, and for just that one hour she would yield to the sweet be- 
wildering joy that his presence filled her with. 

“ You will not speak angrily to Henry?” she faltered, at last, 
when they reached the door of the humble lodging-house in which 
her lover had hidden her away. “ 1 promised to marry him of my 
own free will— indeed 1 did! He was so ill, and so unhappy, and 
he was afraid that some day 1 w’ould leave him. Besides hang- 
ing her head in her old pretty fashion—” you were gone. He had 
told me you would not come back— 1 was sorry, but 1 did not blame 
you. Sir Charles; but, as you did not want me, 1 thought it would 
be right to give myself to poor flenry, who has no one but me to 
care for him at all.” 

“You need not be afraid. Cherry,” the young man answered very 
gently, in spite of the smoldering wrath in bis eves. “Mr. Beau- 
clerk and X have a— a misunderstanding to clear up, but 1 will re- 


CHERKY. 


89 


member his weak health, 1 promise you. I will not be harder upon 
him than I can possibly help.” 

“ And— and you will let me ran upstairs and tell him you are 
here?” she urged. ” Martha is sitting with him, in case he should 
awake and miss me. You remember old Martha, don’t you? She 
came to London with us, and has been a kind friend to me ever 
since.” 

” Heaven bless old Martha!” muttered Sir Charles, and he added 
aloud—” My child, it is necessary that 1 should see Mr. Beauclerk 
alone. Show me the room and let me go in; 1 will send your maid 
dow T n to you.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

For nearly an hour Sir Charles West sat in the shabby dimly lit 
room watching Henry Beauclerk, as he lay, sleeping uneasily, on 
the sofa. 

The change in the poor fellow’s appearance had shocked him, 
notwithstanding the fierce anger which was brooding within him. 
Henry’s hair had grown quite gray; his jaws were hollow, the long 
womanish-looking hands, which he moved restlessly at times, 
seemed wasted, almost transparent, 

” How can a man war against such a wreck as that?” thought 
Sir Charles, feeling as if he had been robbed of his lawful revenge. 
” 1 will not rouse him. Let him awake, and answer to me, if he 
can, tor the infernal misery he has caused that child and me. He 
will not find me so easy a dupe this time!” 

There was a death-like stillness about the house. Far off, the 
faint sound could be heard of an organ in the street, and ot children 
shouting to each other in their play. In the room, only Henry’s 
labored breath broke the hour-long silence. The night was close 
and airless; the scanty curtains hung dowm motionless by the glim- 
mering square of the open window. 

With patient impatience Sir Charles sat on, remembering his 
promise to Cherry; his eyes fixed on the sleeping man’s face, his 
thoughts busy with the mystery he was there to solve. 

” Shall 1 give you up now, my little Cherry?” he muttered, see- 
ing that, at last, Henry had turned, and sighed, and thrown his 
arms feverishly above his head. ” Kever again! }fou are mine, 
and no other man’s. Perhaps you can never be my wife, but you 
shall be my mother’s daughter, to be guarded and cherished by us 


90 


CHERRY. 


us long as we both live. 1 forsook you before, for fear of a little 
pain to myself; nothing but death shall part us any more!” 

He stood up, ready to face the worst, as he felt; and, at the same 
moment, Henry Beauclerk opened his eyes and saw him. The un- 
happy man sprung up, putting the damp gray hair back from his 
temples, and staring with sleep-bewildered eyes. 

“ You are there again?” he said in a hoaise whisper. “ Why do 
you come night after night to torment me? Haven’t 1 told you 
that you can not marry her?” 

‘* 1 am no dream, as you would seem to imply, Mr. Beauclerk,” 
was the cool answer. “I am a highly substantial reality, believe 
me, and 1. am here to demand from you an explanation.” 

Henry shrunk back a pace or two, beginning instinctively to ar- 
range his disordered hair and garments. Sir Charles’s voice seemed 
to have pierced through the lingering mists of his sleep, and re- 
called him instantaneously to himself. 

“ 1—1 beg your pardon,” he stammered, with a clumsy attempt 
nt politeness. ”1 hail no idea, of course. You wish to see me, 
you say? Cherry is — is not here; she — she is out, 1 am afraid.” 

His wasted hands were trembling as he spoke; he avoided Sir 
Charles’s steady gaze, and turned away to find liis visitor a chair. 

“ Shelias been out,” the young man answered, unmoved. “I 
had the pleasure, an hour ago, of bringing her home.” 

“You have seen her— seen Cherry?” 

“lhave.” 

“ And— and she has told you?” 

“ Of your intended marriage with her to-morrow? Yes.” 

Henry Beauclerk uttered a piteous and uncouth sound, and 
r, truck his temples wildly with his clinched hands. Then, turning, 
lie saw Sir Charles’s eyes still fixed upon him in a somewhat con- 
temptuous scrutiny, and he made another eftort at self -control. 

“ It is true,” he answered, pressing his shaking fingers together. 
c ‘ But 1 do not see that the news concerns any one but Miss Van- 
brugh and myself; you least of all. Sir Charles West.” 

“ It concerns me most of all,” Sir Charles retorted quietly. “ I 
told you, sir, that 1 was here for the purpose of demanding an ex- 
planation. Have you so soon forgotten our last interview— the 
answer you gave me when I asked for Miss Vanbrugh’s hand in 
marriage?” 

“ It was impossible —utterly impossible, 1 tell you!” cried Henry, 
u lurid excitement beginning to flash from his eyes. “ Why do } r ou 
come back to mar our lives again? Y r ou who have everything else 


CHERRY. 


91 


the world can give, could you not have left me this child whom 1 
love, and who belonged to me before she ever saw your cursed 
face?” 

“ Whom I love, and whom I would have made my happy and 
honored wife two years ago, but for you.” Sir Charles’s face was 
darkening ominously now. “ 1 ask you again, if you have forgot- 
ten our last meeting, sir, and the ban you put upon my marriage 
with the girl who had given me her innocent heart, and to whom 
my honor was pledged? Do you think that any reason less awful 
than the one you gave me could have prevented me from keeping 
my word to her, even at the cost of life itself?” 

In his exciiement Sir Charles began to pace up and down the nar- 
row room. Henry watched him, with furtive glances fiom under 
his shaggy eyebrows; he was biting his nails in the old nervous 
way, every vestige of color seemed drained from his hollow face. 

“ I went away,” the young man went on, between his stormy 
strides—” 1 went away because I believed it to be my duty to tear 
myself from Cherry— for her sake, poor child, as well a3 for my 
own. 1 left her alone— may Heaven forgive me for it — in your 
care. For two miserable years 1 have tried my hardest to forget her, 
to believe that she had forgotten me, and was happy— but I could 
not; it was no use. And you see 1 have come back — come back to 
learn from the child’s own innocent lips that you lied to me that 
night, like a dog, and that you yourself were about to marry the 
girl who, you assured me with a solemn oath, was born of an insane 
mother— a mother who died, as you declared, raving mad, after 
attempting the life of her husband, William Vanbrugh!” 

“Hush! Not so loud!” Henry cried, springing forward, and 
clutching him by the arm. “Cherry must not hear you! The 
secret is between us two! She need never guess it, I will make 
her happy— 1 swear it! And, if you w ill hold your cursed tongue, 
who is to tell her that it is not she ”— he broke into a long dreadful 
laugh—” it is not she who is mad, but I!” 

Sir Charles started back horror-stricken; the breath of the mad- 
man was hot on his face, his eyes were gleaming dangerously. 

“ You?” he echoed hoarsely, a great swift throb of gratitude 
going up, in the midst of his own imminent peril, from his heart 
to Heaven— to Heaven who had called him back to Cherry in he:t 
awful need. 

“ Yes— 1!” The unhappy wretch broke into another peal o:\ 
blood-curdling laughter. “ You were all very clever, but you neve:? 
found it out! That is the real secret— it is 1 who am mad! But nol 


92 


CHEKIiY. 


so mad ”— he lowered his voice with instinctive caution— “ that 1 
did not know Melissa when she came to me that day in her black 
gown, and Frances would have turned her from the door. She is 
called Cherry now, and her eyes are dark, but she is my little sweet- 
heart for all that, come back from her grave on the hill to tell me 
that she has forgiven me. She is my little murdered Melissa, who 
belongs to me — to me, 1 say! Take her from me, ii you dare!” 

He sprung with a savage cry at Sir Charles’s throat, and the two 
men closed in a horrible struggle for life. 

* * * * * * * 

For a year after Cherry Vanbrugh became Lady West, Henry 
Beauclerk lived, harmless and happy, in a quiet suite of rooms, 
which had been set apart for his use at the Hall. 

His first outbreak was his last, and, when he recovered from the 
illness which succeeded it, all recollections of later years seemed to 
have faded from his mind forever. 

Little Lady West’s daily visits were his grealest delight. He was 
incapable of recognizing her, but her sweet and compassionate lace, 
and her gentle voice, appeared, as of old, to recall in some vague 
way his little dead love, Melissa Garth, about whom he was never 
weary of babbling to Cherry, or to Pussums, who often walked by 
the chair of the dying man, and filled his lap with flowers when he 
was brought out to take the air in a sheltered walk of the Hall 
gardens. 

When at last the poor fellow went to his rest, they laid him close 
to the little grave in Manchester, where his heart had so long lain 
buried, and planted about him the homely garden flowers he had 
always loved the best. 

* * * * * * * 

Cherry has persuaded her husband— no very difficult task for her 
at any time— to let her make a little pilgrimage to the quiet Lan- 
cashire church-yard every year. She tells her two little lads that a 
man lies there who was very unhappy while he lived, and very good 
to her, and makes them promise that the two grassy graves shall 
never be neglected when her sons grow up, and she is an old, old 
woman. 

“ Little Cherry- mother,” Pussums cries indignantly, when she 
overhears these remarks, “ you will never be old. Hal and Charlie 
will bring my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave before long, I 
feel convinced — a pair of Turks. But as for you, darling, you are 
a ridiculous sort of little mother— only fit to be tormented and 
cuddled and kissed! Isn’t she, Gran -Gran?” 


CHEEKY. 


93 


“Ask papa/’ says Gran-Gran, smiling indulgently. “ Here he 
comes up the yew-walk with Mrs. Lancaster.” 

“ Papa!” There is a joyful shout, and a rush of little feet across 
the teirace and down the steps toward the break in the trees through 
which Sir Charles, sunburned and cheery, is seen approaching with 
a lady in a riding-habit. 

“Blanche!” cries Clem, the irrepressible. “ What color are the 
bride-maids to w r ear — is it decided? Do let us wear all white, be- 
cause of your own pretty white name!” 

“ With bunches of cherry-blossoms?” suggests Blanche gayly, 
stooping to kiss the rosy little fellows who cling about her gown 
and Sir Charles’s knees. 

“ We’ll try the effect!” cries papa, running off with little Henry, 
and popping him gently on to his wife’s while muslin back. “ How 
do white muslin and cherry-blossoms go together, mother?” he 
calls to Lady West, who is watching their antics from the sunshiny 
old terrace. “ There— be off, all of you! And, as you value your 
heads, see that the claret-cup be well iced at luncheon, and the 
supply inexhaustible. Come, my darling he drew his wife’s lit- 
tle hand within his arm. “ Blanche has the children in charge— 
you and I will go home together.” 


THE END. 


ADVERTISEMENTS 



THE BEST 

Washing; Cepil 

EVER INVENTED. 

No Lady, Married or Sin- 
gle, Rich or Poor, House- 
keeping or Boarding, will 
be without it after testing 
its utility. 

Sold by all first-class 
Grocers, but beware of 
worthless imitations. 



AND KINDRED EVILS 


RELIEVED WITHOUT DRUGS. 

The Sufferer from CONSTIPATION and PILES Should Test the 

GLUTEN SUPPOSITORIES, 

Which cure most cases by increasing the nutrition of the parts , thus indue- 
iug desire and strengthening the power of expulsion. 

FIFTY CENTS BY MAIL, POSTPAID. 


Dr A. W. Thompson, Northampton, Mass., says: “ I have tested the Gluten 
Suppositories, and consider them valuable, as, indeed, I expected from the ex- 
cellence of their theory.” .. . . . v . 

Dr Wm. Tod IIelmuth declares the Gluten Suppositories to be “the best 
remedy for constipation which I have ever prescribed.” 

“As Sancho Pariza said of sleep, so say I of your Gluten Suppositories: 
‘God bless the man who invented them ’ !”— E. L. Ripley, Burlington, Vt. 

“I cannot speak too highly of the Health Food Company’s Gluten Supposi- 
tories as they have been a perfect God-send to me. I believe them superior 
to anything ever devised fyr the relief of constipation and hemorrhoids. 
I have suffered from these evils more than twenty years, and have at last 
found substantial relief through the use of the Gluten Suppositories.”— 
Cyrus Bradbury, Hopedale, Mass. 

SEND FOR ALL OUR HEALTH FOOD LITERATURE, 


Try our WHEATENA, the Best Breakfast Food in the world! 

Sfi EALTH FOOD CO., Itli Are. ssiset lOth St., 

Adjoining Stewart’s. New York, N. Y. 




It is a solid, 
handsome cake 
of scouring soap, 

_ _ _ _ _ _ which has no 

equal for all cleaning purposes except the laundry. To use it is to value it. 

What will Sapolio do? Why, it will clean paint, make oil-cloths bright, and 
give the floors, tables and shelves a new appearance. 

It will take the grease off the dishes and off the pots and pans. 

You can scour the knives and forks with it, and make the tin things slune 
brightly. The wash-basin, the bath-tub. even the greasy kitchen sink, will be 
as clean as a new pin if you use SAPOLIO. One cake will prove all we 
say. Be a clever little housekeeper and try it. 

BEWARE OF IMITATIONS. 


MUNRO’S PUBLICATIONS. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY 

POCKET EDITION. 


The following books are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any 
address, postage free, by the publisher, on receipt of price. Parties 
wishing the Pocket Edition of The Seaside Librarv must be careful to 
mention the Pocket Edition, otherwise the Ordinary Edition will be sent. 

Newsdealers wishing catalogues of The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
bearing their imprint, will be supplied on sending their names, addresses, and 
number required. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, N. Y. 


LIST OF AUTHOES. 


Works by tbe author of “ Addio’s 
Husband.” 

388 Addie’s Husband ; or, Through 

Clouds to Sunshine. 10 

504 My Poor Wife 10 

Works by tbe an tlior of “ A Great 
Mistake.” 

2-44 A Great Mistake 20 

246 A Fatal Dower 10 

372 Phyllis’ Probation 10 

461 His Wedded Wife 20 


Mrs. Alexander’s Works. 


5 The Admiral’s Ward 20 

17 The Wooing O’t 20 

62 The. Executor 20 

189 Valerie’s Fate 10 

229 Maid, Wife, or Widow? 10 

236 Which Shall it Be? 20 

339 Mrs. Vereker’s Courier Maid. . . 10 

490 A Second Life 20 


Alison’s Works. 

194 “ So Near, and Yet So Far!”. .. 10 

278 For Life and Love... 10 

481 The House That Jack Built.... 10 

F. Anstey’s Works. 

59 Vice Versa 20 

225 The Giant’s Robe 20 

503 The Tinted Venus. A Farcical 

Romance 10 

R. M. Ballantyne’s Works. 

89 The Red Eric 10 

95 The Fir-e Brigade 10 

96 Erling the Bold. 10 

Anne Beale’s Works. 

188 Idonea 20 

199 The Fisher Village 10 

Basil’s Works. 

844 “ The Wearing of the Green ” . . 20 
547 A Coquette’s Conquest 20 


Walter Besant’s Works. 

97 All in a Garden Fair 20 

137 Uncle Jack 10 

140 A Glorious Fortune... ..... 10 

146 Love Finds the Way, and Other 

Stories. By Besant and Rice 10 

230 Dorothy Forster 20 

324 In Luck at Last 10 


William Black’s Works. 

1 Yolande 20 

18 Shandon Bells 20 

21 Sunrise : A Story of These 

Times 20 

23 A Princess of Thule 20 

39 In Silk Attire 20 

44 Macleod of Dare 20 

49 That Beautiful Wretch 20 

50 The Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton 20 

70 White Wings: A Yachting Ro- 
mance 10 

78 Madcap Violet...., 20 

81 A Daughter of Heth 20 

124 Three Feathers * 20 

125 The Monarch of Mincing Lane. 20 

126 Kilmeny 20 

138 Green Pastures and Piccadilly. 20 
265 Judith Shakespeare: Her Love 

Affairs and Other Adventures 20 
472 The Wise Women of Inverness. 10 


R. D. Blackmore’s Works. 

67 Lorna Doone 30 

427 The Remarkable History of Sir 
Thomas Upmore, Bart., M. P. 20 


tyliss M. E. Braddon’s Works. 


35 Lady Audley’s Secret 20 

56 Phantom Fortune 20 

74 Aurora Floyd 20 

110 Under the Red Flag..., 10 

153 The Golden Calf 20 

204 Vixen 20 


| THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— PocTcet Edition. 


Mias M. E* Braddon’ s Works— 


Continued* 

311 The Octoroon 10 

334 Barbara ; or, Splendid Misery. . 20 

263 An Ishmaelite 20 

315 The Mistletoe Bough. Edited 

by Miss Braddon 20 

434 Wyllard’s Weird 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daugh- 
ter. Part I . . * 20 

478 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daugh- 
ter. Part II.... 20 

480 Married in Haste. Edited by 

Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

487 Put to the Test. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

488 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter.... 20 

489 Rupert God win 20 

495 Mount Royal 20 

496 Only a Woman. Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

497 The Lady’s Mile 20 

498 Only a Clod 20 

499 The Cloven Foot 20 

511 A Strange World 20 

515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 

524 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

529 The Doctor’s Wife 20 

642 Fenton’s Quest 20 

541 Cut by the County; or, Grace 

Darnel 10 

548 The Fatal Marriage, and The 

Shadow in the Corner 10 

549 Dudley Carleon ; or, The Broth- 

er’s Secret, and George Caul- 
field’s Journey 10 

552 Hostages to Fortune 20 


554 Charlotte’s Inheritance. (Se- 
quel to “ Birds of Prey ”).... 20 
557 To the Bitter Eud 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 20 

560 Asphodel 20 

561 Just as I am; or, A Living Lie 20 


Works by C-karlotte M. Braeme, 


Author of “ Dora Thorne.” 

19 Her Mother’s Sin 10 

51 Dora Thorne 20 

64 A Broken Wedding-Ring 20 

68 A Queen Amongst Women 10 

69 Madolin’s Lover 20 

73 Redeemed by Love. 20 

76 Wife in Name Only 20 

79 Wedded aud Parted 10 

92 2.ord Lynne’s Choice 10 

148 Thorns and Orange-Blossoms.. 10 

190 Romance of a Black Veil 10 

220 Which Loved Him Best? 10 

237 Repented at Leisure 20 

249 “ Prince Charlie’s Daughter . 10 

250 Sunshine and Roses; or, Di- 

ana’s Discipline 10 

e54 The Wife’s Secret, and Fair 

but False 10 

283 The Sin of a Lifetime 10 

287 At War With Herself 10 

888 From Gloom to Sunlight. ...... 10 


291 Love’s Warfare Id 

292 A Golden Heart 10 

293 The Shadow of a Sin.... 10 

294 Hilda 10 

295 A Woman’s War...... 10 

296 A Rose in Thorns. 10 

297 Hilary’s Folly 10 

299 The Fatal Lilies, and A Bride 

from the Sea 10 

300 A Gilded Sin, and A Bridge of 

Love 10 

303 Ingledew House, and More Bit- 

ter than Death 10 

304 In Cupid’s Net 10 

305 A Dead Heart, and Lady Gwen- 

doline’s Dream 10 

306 A Golden Dawn, and Love for 

a Day 10 

307 Two Kisses, and Like no Other 

Love 10 

308 Beyond Pardon 20 

411 A Bitter Atonement 20 

433 My Sister Kate 10 

459 A Woman’s Temptation 20 

460 Under a Shadow 20 

465 The Earl’s Atonement 20 

466 Between Two Loves 20 

467 A Struggle for a Ring 20 

469 Lady Darner’s Secret 20 

470 Evelyn’s Folly 20 

471 Thrown on the World 20 

476 Between Two Sins 10 

516 Put Asunder ; or, Lady Castle- 

maine’s Divorce 20 


Charlotte Bronte’s Works. 

15 Jane Eyre 20 

57 Shirley 20 

Rhoda Broughton’s Works. 

86 Belinda ■ 20 

101 Second Thoughts 20 

227 Nancy 20 

L Dbcrt Buchanan’s Works. 

145 “ Storm-Beaten God and The 

Man 20 

154 Annan Water 20 

181 The New Abelard 10 

398 Matt: A Tale of a Caravan — 10 

Captain Fred Burnaby’s Works. 

375 A Ride to Khiva 20 

384 On Horseback Through Asia 

Minor 20 

E. Fairfax Byrrne’s Works. 

521 Entangled 20 

538 A Fair Country Maid 20 

Hall Caine’s Works. 

445 The Shadow of a Crime 20 

520 She’s All the World to Me 10 

Rosa Noucliette Carey’s Works. 

215 Not Like Other Girls 20 

396 Robert Ord’s Atonement 20 

551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial 20 


TEE SEASIDE LIBBAU T. —Pocket Edition. 


Wilkie Collins’s Works. 


B. M. Croker’s Works. 


52 The New Magdalen. 10 

402 The Moonstone 20 

167 Heart and Science 20 

168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

175 Love’s Random Shot.- 10 

233 “ I Say No;” or, The Love-Let- 
ter Answered 20 

608 The Girl at the Gate. 10 


Hugh Conway’s Works. 


240 Called Back 10 

251 The Daughter of the Stars, and 
Other Tales 10 

301 Dark Days 10 

302 The Blatchford Bequest 10 

502 Carriston’s Gift 10 

625 Paul Yargas, and Other Stories 10 

543 A Family Affair 20 


J. Feniinore Cooper’s Works. 


60 The Last of the Mohicans 20 

63 The Spy..... 20 

309 The Pathfinder 20 

310 The Prairie 20 

318 The Pioneers ; or, The Sources 

of the Susquehanna 20 

349 The Two Admirals. A Tale of 

the Sea 20 

359 The Water-Witch 20 

361 The Red Rover. A Tale of the 

Sea 20 

373 Wing and Wing 20 

378 Homeward Bound; or, The 
Chase 20 


379 Home as Found. (Sequel to 

‘‘Homeward Bound”) 20 

380 Wyandotte; or, The Hutted 

Knoll 20 

385 The Headsman; or, The Ab- 

baye des Yignerons 20 

894 The Bravo...,. 20 

397 Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leag- 
uer of Boston 20 

400 The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish... 20 

413 Afloat and Ashore.... 20 

414 Miles Wallingford. (Sequel to 

Afloat and Ashore ”) 20 

415 The Ways of the Hour. ........ 20 

416 Jack Tier; or, The Florida Reef 20 

419 TheChainbearer; or, The Little- 

page Manuscripts 20 

420 Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage 

Manuscripts 20 

421 The Redskins; or, Indian and 

Injin. Being the conclusion 
of the Littlepage Manuscripts 20 


422 Precaution 20 

423 The Sea Lions; or. The Lost 

Sealers 20 

424 Mercedes of Castile; or, The 

Voyage to Cathay 20 

425 The Oak-Openings ; or, The Bee- 

Hunter 20 

do i fjiu on 

A is; u<Juuuu> . fl\) 


207 Pretty Miss Neville 20 

260 Proper Pride 10 

412 Some One Else 20 


Charles Dickens’s Works. 

10 The Old Curiosity Shop 20 

22 David Copperfield. Vol. 1 20 

22 David Copperfield. Vol. II.... 20 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. 1 20 

24 Pickwick Papers. Vol. II 20 

37 Nicholas Nickleby. First half. 20 
37 Nicholas Nickleby. Second half 20 

41 Oliver Twist 20 

77 A Tale of Two Cities 20 

84 Hard Times 10 

91 Barnaby Rudge 20 

94 Little Dorrit. First half 20 

94 Little Dorrit. Second half 20 

106 Bleak House. First half 20 

106 Bleak House. Second half 20 

107 Dombey and Son 40 

108 The Cricket on the Hearth, and 

Doctor Marigold., 10 

131 Our Mutual Friend 40 

132 Master Humphrey’s Clock 10 

152 The Uncommercial Traveler. . . 20 

168 No Thoroughfare. By Dickens 

and Collins 10 

169 The Haunted Man 10 

437 Life and Adventures of Martin 

Chuzzlewit. First half 20 

437 Life and Adventures of Martin 

Chuzzlewit. Second half 20 

439 Great Expectations 20 

440 Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings 10 

447 American Notes 20 

448 Pictures From Italy, and The 

Mud fog Papers, &c 20 

454 The Mystery of Edwin Drood.. 20 

456 Sketches by Boz. Illustrative 
of Every-day Life and Every- 
day People.,.. 20 


F. Du Boisgobey’s Works. 

82 Sealed Lips 26 

104 The Coral Pin 30 

264 Piedouche, a French Detective. 10 
328 Babiole, the Pretty Milliner. 

First half 20 

328 Babiole, the Pretty Milliner. 

Second half 20 

453 The Lottery Ticket 20 

475 The Prima Donna’s Husband. . 20 

522 Zig-Zag, the Clown; or, Steel 

Gauntlets 26 

523 The Consequences of a Duel. A 

Parisian Romance 26 


‘‘The Duchess’s” Works. 


2 Molly Bawn 20 

6 Portia 20 

14 Airy Fairy Lilian 10 

16 Phyllis. 20 

25 Mrs. Geoffrey . 20 

29 Beauty’s Daughters 10 

30 Faith and Unfaith..... 26 

118 Loys, Lord Berresford, and 

Eric Dering 10 


TEE SEASIDE LIBRAR 7. —Pocket Edition, 


“The Ducliess’s” Works— Con- 
tinued. 

119 Monica, and A Rose Distill’d. .. 10 

123 Sweet is True Love . 10 

129 Rossmoyne ••••••• 10 

134 The Witching Hour, and Other 

Stories... •••••••• 10 

136 “That Last Rehearsal,” and 

Other Stories 10 

166 Moonshine and Marguerites.... 10 

171 Fortune’s Wheel 10 

284 Doris JjJ 

312 A Week in Killarney 10 

342 The Baby, and One New Year s 

Eve 10 

890 Mildred Trevanion 10 

404 In Durance Vile, and Other 

Stories 10 

486 Dick’s Sweetheart 20 

494 A Maiden All Forlorn, and Bar- 
bara 10 

617 A Passive Crime, and Other 

Stories JO 

641 “ As It Fell Upon a Day 10 

Alexander Dumas’s Works. 

55 The Three Guardsmen 20 

75 Twenty Years After 20 

259 The Bride of Monte-Cristo. A 
Sequel to ’ The Count of 

Monte-Cristo ” 10 

262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Parti... 30 

262 The Count of Monte-Cristo. 

Part II... 30 

George Eliot’s Works. 

3 The Mill on the Floss 20 

81 Middlemarch 20 

34 Daniel Deronda *0 

36 Adam Bede 30 

42 Romola 20 

G. Manville Fenn’s Works, 

193 The Rosery Folk 10 

658 Poverty Corner 20 

Octave Feuillet’s Works. 

66 The Romance of a Poor Young 

Man 10 

386 Led Astray; or, “La Petite 

Comtesse” 10 

Mrs. Forrester’s Works. 

80 June 20 

280 Omnia Yanitas. A Tale of So- 

ciety.. -• *1° 

484 Although He Was a Lord, and 

Other Tales.,.. 1° 

R. E. Francillon’s Works. 

185 A Great Heiress: A Fortune 

in Seven Checks . . 10 

319 Face to Face : A Fact in Seven 
Fables 10 

860 Ropes of Sand........ 30 


Emile Gaboriau’s Works. 

7 File No. 113 . 20 

12 Other People’s Money 20 

20 Within an Inch of His Life 20 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Vol 1 20 

26 Monsieur Lecoq. Yol. II 20 

33 The Clique of Gold 10 

38 The Widow Lerouge. 20 

43 The Mystery of Orcival, 20 

144 Promises of Marriage 10 

Charles Gibbon’s Works. 

64 A Maiden Fair 10 

317 By Mead and Stream 20 

Miss Grant’s Works. 

222 The Sun-Maid ... 20 

555 Cara Roma 20 

Thomas Harcly’s Works. 

139 The Romantic Adventures of 

a Mi Ik maid 10 

530 A Pair of Blue Eyes 20 

John B. Harwood’s Works. 

143 One False, Both Fair 20 

358 Within the Clasp 20 

Mary Cecil Hay’s Works. 

65 Back to the Old Home 10 

72 Old Myddelton's Money 2C 

196 Hidden Perils 10 

197 For Her Dear Sake. 20 

224 The Arundel Motto 10 

281 The Squire’s Legacy 20 

290 Nora’s Love Test 20 

408 Lester’s Secret 20 

Works by the Author of “Judith 
Wynne.” 

332 Judith Wynne 20 

506 Lady Lovelace..-. 20 

William H, G. Kingston’s Works, 

117 A Tale of the Shore and Ocean. 20 
133 Peter the Whaler. . 10 

Charles Lever’s Works, 

191 Harry Lorrequer 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dra- 
goon. First half. . . 20 

212 Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dra- 
goon. Second half 20 

243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.” First 

half 20 

243 Tom Burke of “ Ours.” Sec- 
ond half.. 30 

Sir E, Bulwer Lytton’s Works. 

40 The Last Days of Pompeii 20 

83 A Strange Story 20 

90 Ernest Maltravers 20 

130 The Last of the Barons. First 

half 20 

130 The Last of the Barons. Sec- 

ond half 30 

162 Eugene Aram 3C 

164 Leila; or, The Siege of Grenada 


TEE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


r — 

George Macdonald’s Works, 


282 Donal Grant 20 

325 The Portent 10 

326 Phantastes. A Faerie Romance 

for Men and Women 10 

Florence Marryat’s Works, 

j59 A Moment of Madness, and 

Other Stories..., 10 

183 Old Coutrairy, and Other 

Stories.. M 10 

208 The Ghost of Charlotte Cray, 

and Other Stories 10 

2*76 Under the Lilies and Roses 10 

444 The Heart of Jane Warner 20 

449 Peeress and Piayer 20 

Captain Marryat’s Works. 

88 The Privateersman 20 

272 The Little Savage 10 


Helen B. Matkers’s Works. 


Mrs. Olipliant’s Works. 

45 A Little Pilgrim 10 

177 Salem Chapel.. 20 

205 The Minister’s Wife 30 

321 The Prodigals, and Their In- 
heritance 10 

337 Memoirs and Resolutions of 
Adam Graeme of Mossgray, 
including some Chronicles of 

the Borough of Fendie 2 0 

345 Madam 20 

351 The House on the Moor 20 

357 John 20 

370 Lucy Crofton 10 

371 Margaret Maitland 20 

377 Magdalen Hepburn : A Story of 

the Scottish Reformation 20 

402 Lilliesleaf ; or, Passages in the 
Life of Mrs Margaret Mait- 
land of Sunnyside 20 

410 Old Lady Mary 10 

527 The Da vs of My Life 20 

528 At His Gates 20 


13 Eyre’s Acquittal 10 

221 Cornin’ Thro’ the Rye 20 

438 Found Out 10 

Mrs, Alex. McVeigh Miller’s 
Works. 

267 Laurel Vane; or, The Girls’ 

Conspiracy 20 

268 Lady Gay’s Pride; or, The 

Miser’s Treasure 20 

269 Lancaster’s Choice 20 

316 Sworn to Silence; or. Aline 

Rodney’s Secret 20 

Jean Middlemas’s Works. 

155 Lady Muriel’s Secret 20 

539 Silvermead 20 

Alan Muir’s Works. 

172 “Golden Girls” 20 

346 Tumbledown Farm 10 


“ Ouida’s ” Works. 


4 Under Two Flags 20 

9 Wanda, Countess von Szalras.. 20 

116 Moths 20 

128 Afternoon and Other Sketches. 10 

226 Friendship 20 

228 Princess Napraxine 20 

238 Pascarel 20 

239 Signa 20 

433 A Rainy June 10 

James Payn’s Works. 

48 Thicker Than Water 20 

186 The Canon’s Ward 20 

343 The Talk of the Town 20 

Mrs. Campbell Praed’s Works. 

428 Zero: A Story of Monte-Carlo. 10 
477 Affinities 10 

Eleanor C. Price’s Works. 

173 The Foreigners 20 

331 Gerald 20 


Miss Mu lock’s Works. 


11 John Halifax, Gentleman 20 

245 Miss Tommy 10 

David Christie Murray’s Works. 

58 By the Gate of the Sea 10 

195 “ The Way of the World ” 20 

320 A Bit of Human Nature 10 

W. E. Norris’s Works. 

184 Thirl by Hall 20 

277 A Man of His Word 10 

355 That Terrible Man 10 

500 Adrian Vidal 20 

Laurence Oliphant’s Works. 

47 Altiora Peto 20 

537 Piccadilly 10 


Charles Reade’s Works. 

46 Very Hard Cash 20 

98 A Woman-Hater 20 

206 The Picture, and Jack of All 

Trades 10 

210 Readiana: Comments on Cur- 
rent Events 10 

213 A Terrible Temptation 20 

214 Put Yourself in His Place 20 

216 Foul Play 20 

231 Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy... 20 

232 Love and Money ; or, A Perilous 

Secret 10 

235 “It is Never Too Late to 
Mend.” A Matter-of-Fact Ro- 
mance 20 

“Rita’s” Works, 

252 A Sinless Secret 10 

446 Dame Durden 20 


*£ti& SEASIDE LIBRARY— Pocket EdlHon. 


F . W. Robinson’s Works. 

157 Milly’sHero 20 

217 The Man She Cared For 20 

201 A Fair Maid 20 

455 Lazarus in London 20 

W. Clark Russell’s Works. 

85 A Sea Queen 20 

109 Little Loo 20 

180 Round the Galley Fire 10 

209 John Holdsworth, Chief Mate.. 10 
223 A Sailor’s Sweetheart 20 

Sir Walter Scott’s Works. 

28 Ivanhoe 20 

201 The Monastery 20 

202 The Abbot. (Sequel to “The 

Monastery ”) 20 

353 The Black Dwarf, and A Le- 
gend of Montrose 20 

362 The Bride of Lammermoor 20 

363 The Surgeon’s Daughter 10 

364 Castle Dangerous 10 

391 The Heart of Mid-Lothian 20 

892 Peveril of the Peak 20 

393 The Pirate 20 

401 Waverley 20 

417 The Fair Maid of Perth; or, St. 

Valentine’s Day... 20 

418 St. Ronan’s Well 20 

463 Redgauntlet. A Tale of the 

Eighteenth Century 20 

507 Chronicles of the Canongate, 

and Other Stories 10 

Hawley Smart’s Works. 

348 From Post to Finish. A Racing 

Romance 20 

867 Tie and Trick 20 

550 Struck Down 10 

Frank E. Smedley’s Works. 


from the Life of a Private 

Pupil 20 

562 Lewis Arundel; or, The Rail- 
road of Life - 20 


Eugene Sue’s Works. 

270 The Wandering Jew. Part I... 20 

270 The Wandering Jew. Part H.. 20 

271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part I. 20 
271 The Mysteries of Paris. Part II. 20 

William M. Thackeray’s Works. 


27 Vanity Fair 20 

165 The History of Henry Esmond. 20 

464 The Newcomes. Parti 20 

164 The Newcomes. Part II 20 

531 The Prime Minister (1st half).. 20 
531 The Prime Minister (2d halt).. 20 

*~nie Thomas’s Works. 

/4I She Loved Him 1 10 

142 Jenifer 20 


Anthony Trollope’s Works. 


32 The Land Leaguers 20 

93 Anthony Trollope’s Autobiog- 
raphy . 20 

147 Rachel Ray 20 

200 An Old Man’s Love 10 

Jules Verne’s Works. 

87 Dick Sand ; or, A Captain at 

Fifteen 2C 

100 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. 26 
368 The Southern Star ; or, the Dia- 
mond Land . 20 

395 The Archipelago on Fire 10 

L. B. Walford’s Works. 

241 The Baby’s Grandmother 10 

256 Mr. Smith: A Part of His Life. 20 
258 Cousins 20 

F. Warden’s Works. 

192 At the World’s Mercy . 20 

248 The House on the Marsh 10 

286 Deldee; or, The Iron Hand.... 20 

482 A Vagrant Wife 20 

556 A Prince of Darkness 20 

G. J. Whyte-Melville’s Works. 

409 Roy’s Wife 20 

451 Market Harborough, and Inside 

the Bar 20 

Mrs. Henry Wood’s Works. 

8 East Lynne 20 

255 The Mystery 20 

277 The Surgeon’s Daughters 10 

508 The Unholy Wish 10 

513 Helen Whitney’s Wedding, and 

Other Tales 10 

514 The Mystery of Jessy Page, and 

Other Tales 10 

Charlotte M. Yon^e’s Works. 

247 The Armourer's Prentices 10 

275 The Three Brides 10 

535 Henrietta’s Wish. A Tale 10 

Miscellaneous. 

53 The Story of Ida. Francesca.. 10 
71 A Struggle for Fame. Mrs. J. 

H. Riddell 20 

61 Charlotte Temple. Mrs. Row- 

son 10 

99 Barbara’s History. Amelia B. 

Edwards 20 

103 Rose Fleming. Dora Russell.. 1C 

105 A Noble Wife. John Saunders 20 

111 The Little School-master Mark. 

J. H. Shorthouse 10 

112 The Waters of Marah. John 

Hill 20 

113 Mrs. Carr’s Companion. M. G. 

Wightwick.. 10 

114 Some of Our Girls. Mrs. C. J. 

Eiloart 20 

115 Diamond Cut Diamond. T. 

Adolphus Trollope 10 

j 120 Tom Brown’s School Days at 
i Rugby. Thomas Hughes.... 20 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. — Pocket Edition. 


Miscellaneous — Continued. 

121 Maid of Athens. Justin Mc- 

Carthy 20 

122 lone Stewart. Mrs. E. Lynn 

Linton 20 

127 Adrian Bright. Mrs. Caddy 20 

149 The Captain’s Daughter. From 

the Russian of Pushkin 10 

150 For Himseif Alone. T. W. 

Speight 10 

151 TheDucie Diamonds. C. Blath- 

erwick 10 

156 “For a Dream’s Sake.” Mrs. 

Herbert Martin 20 

158 The Starling. Norman Mac- 
leod, D.D 10 

160 Her Gentle Deeds. Sarah Tyt- 

ler 10 

161 The Lady of Lyons. Founded 

on the Play of that title by 

Lord Lytton 10 

163 Winifred Power. Joyce Dar- 
rell... „ 20 

170 A Great Treason. Mary Hop- 

pus 30 

174 Under a Ban. Mrs. Lodge 20 

176 An April Day. Philippa Prit- 
tie Jepnson 10 

178 More Leaves from the Journal 

of a Life in the Highlands. 
Queen Victoria. 10 

179 Little Make-Believe. B. L. Far- 

jeon 10 

182 The Millionaire 20 

185 Dita. Lady Margaret Majendie 10 
187 The Midnight Sun. Fredrika 

Bremer 10 

198 A Husband’s Story 10 

203 John Bull and His Island. Max 
O’Rell 10 

218 Agnes Sorel. G. P. R. James.. 20 

219 Lady Clare : or. The Master of 

the Forges. From French of 

Georges Ohnet 10 

242 The Two Orphans. D’Ennery. 10 
253 The Amazon. Carl Vosmaer. . 10 
257 Beyond Recall. Adeline Ser- 
geant 10 

266 The Water-Babies. Rev. Chas. 

Kingsley 10 

273 Love and Mirage; or, The Wait- 

ing on an Island. M. Beth- 
am-Ed wards 10 

274 Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, 

Princess of Great Britain and 
Ireland. Biographical Sketch 

and Letters 10 

279 Little Goldie : A Story of Wom- 
an’s Love. Mrs. Sumner Hay- 
den . 20 

285 The Gambler's Wife..... 20 

289 John Bull’s Neighbor in Her 
True Light. A “ Brutal Sax- 
on ” 10 

298 Mitchelhurst Place. Margaret 

Veley 10 

811 Two Years Before the Mast. R. 

JL Dana, Jr 20 


313 The Lover's Creed. Mrs. Cash- 


el Hoey 20 

314 Peril. Jessie Fothergill 20 

322 A Woman’s Love-Story 10 

323 A Willful Maid.. 20 

327 Raymond's Atonement. E. 

Werner 20 

329 The Polish Jew. (Translated 

from the French by Caroline 
A. Merighi.) Erckmann Chat- 
rian 1 Q 

330 May Blossom ; or, Between Two 

Loves. Margaret Lee 20 

334 A Marriage of Convenience. 

Harriett Jay 10 

335 The White Witch 20 

336 Philistia. Cecil Power 20 

338 The Family Difficult}". Sarah 

Doudney 10 

340 Under Which King? Compton 

Reade 20 

341 Madolin Rivers; or. The Little 

Beauty of Red Oak Seminary. 

Laura Jean Libbey 20 

347 As Avon Flows. Henry Scott 

Vince 20 

350 Diana of the Ci*ossways. George 

Meredith 10 

352 At Any Cost Edward Garrett. 10 

354 The Lottery of Life. A Story 
of New York Twenty Years 
Ago. John Brougham 20 


355 The Princess Dagomar of Po- 

land. Heinrich Felbermann. 10 

356 A Good Hater. Frederick Boyle 20 

365 George Christy; or, The For- 

tunes of a M'nstrel. Tony 
Pastor , 20 

366 The Mysterious Hunter; or, 

The Man of Death. Capt. L. 

C. Carleton 20 

369 Miss Bretherton. Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward 10 

374 The Dead Man’s Secret. Dr. 

Jupiter Paeon 20 

376 The Crime of Christmas Day. 
The author of “My Ducats 
and My Daughter” 10 

381 The Red Cardinal. Frances 

Elliot 10 

382 Three Sisters. Elsa D’Esterre- 

Keeling 10 

383 Introduced to Society. Hamil- 

ton Aid 6 10 

387 The Secret of the Cliffs. Char- 
lotte French 20 

389 Ichabod. A Portrait. Bertha 

Thomas 10 

399 Miss Brown. Vernon Lee 20 

403 An English Squire. C. R. Cole- 
ridge 20 

405 My Friends and I. Edited by 

Julian Sturgis 10 

406 The Merchant’s Clerk. Samuel 

Warren 10 

407 Tylney Hall. Thomas Hood. .. 20 

426 Venus’s Doves. Ida Ashworth 

Taylor.,., ... gq 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Pocket Edition. 


Miscellaneous— Continued. 


429 Boulderstone ; or, New Men and 

Old Populations. William 
Sime.. 10 

430 A Bitter Reckoning. Author 

of “By Crooked Paths ” — 10 

432 The Witch’s Head. H. Rider 
Haggard 20 

435 Kl.ytia: A Story of Heidelberg 

Castle. George Taylor 20 

436 Stella. Fanny Lewald 20 

441 A Sea Change. Flora L. Shaw. 20 

442 Ranthorpe. George Henry 

Lewes 20 

443 The Bachelor of the Albany... 10 
450 Godfrey Helstone. Georgiana 

M. Craik 20 

452 In the W>st Countrie. May 

Crommelin 20 

457 The^ Russians at the Gates of 

Herat. Charles Marvin 10 

458 A Week of Passion ; or, The 

Dilemma of Mr. George Bar- 
ton the Younger. Edward 

Jenkins. 20 

462 Alice’s Adventures in Wonder- 
land. Lewis Carrol 

With forty-two illustrations 

by John Tenniel 20 

468 The Fortunes, Good and Bad, 
of a Sewing-Girl. Charlotte 

M. Stanley 10 

473 A Lost Son. Mary Linskill — 10 


474 Serapis. An Historical Novel. 

George Ebefs.... 20 

479 Louisa. Katharine S. Macquoid 20 

483 Betwixt My Love and Me 10 

485 Tinted Vapours. J. Maclaren 

Cobban.... 10 

491 Society in London. A Foreign 

Resident 10 

492 Mignon ; or, Booties’ Baby. Il- 

lustrated. J. S. Winter 10 

493 Colonel Enderby’s Wife. Lucas 

Malet 20 

501 Mr. Butler’s Ward. F. Mabel 

Robinson 20 

510 A Mad Love. Author of “ Lover 

and Lord” 10 

512 The Waters of Hercules 20 

504 Curly : An Actor’s Story. John 

Coleman 10 

505 The Society of London. Count 

Paul Vasili 10 

509 Nell Haffenden. Tighe Hopkins 20 

518 The Hidden Sin 20 

519 James Gordon’s Wife 20 

526 Madame De Presnel. E. Fran- 
ces Povn ter 20 

532 Arden Court. Barbara Graham 20 

534 Jack. Alphonse Daudet 20 

536 Dissolving Views. By Mrs. An- 
drew Lang 10 

540 At a High Price. E. Werner. . 20 

545 Vida’s Story. By the author of 

“ Guiity Without Crime ” 10 

546 Mrs. Keith’s Crime. A Novel.. 10 


The foregoing works, contained in The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, postage free, on 
receipt of price. Parties ordering by mail will please order by numbers. Ad- 
dross 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

17 to 27 Vande water Street, New York. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY. 


CLOTH EDITION— HANDSOMELY BOUND. 


CHARLES DICKENS’ WORKS. 


Martin Chuzzlewit 
David Copperfield. 

Dombey and Son 

Nicholas Nickleby. 


50c 

50c 

50c 

50c 


Pickwick Papers 

Bleak House 

Our Mutual Friend 


50c 

50c 

50c 


Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. By Lewis Carroll. 

With forty-two illustrations by John Tenniel 54 

The Publisher will send any of the above works by mail, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of the price. 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 
p « Jl 7 to 27 Vandewater Street, ^ 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY -Pocket Edition. 


LATEST ISSUES. 


NO. PRICE. 

528 At His Gates. By Mrs. Oliphant 20 

529 The Doctor’s Wife. By Miss M. 

E. Braddon 20 

530 A Pair of Blue Eyes. By Thom- 

as Hardy 20 

531 The Prime Minister. By An- 

thony Trollope. First half.. 20 

531 The Prime Minister. By An- 

thony Trollope. Second half 20 

532 Arden Court. Barbara Graham. 20 

533 Hazel Kirke. By Marie Walsh. 20 


534 Jack. By Alphonse Daudet.. 20 

535 Henrietta’s Wish. A Taie^ By 

Charlotte M. Yonge 10 

536 Dissolving Views. By Mrs. An- 

drew Lang 10 

537 Piccadilly. Laurence Oliphant 10 

538 A Fair Country Maid. By E. 

Fairfax Byrrne 20 

539 Silvermead. Jean Middlemas. 20 

540 At a High Price. E. Werner. . . 20 

541 “ As It Fell Upon a Day.” By 

“The Duchess,” and Uncle 
Jack. By Walter Besant 10 

542 Fenton’s Quest. By Miss M. E. 

Braddon 20 

543 A Family Affair. Hugh Con- 

way, author of “Called Back ” 20 

544 Cut by the County; or, Grace 

Darnel. Miss M. E. Braddon. 10 

545 Vida’s Story. By the author of 

“ Guilty Without Crime ” 10 

546 Mrs. Keith’s Crime. A Novel.. 10 

547 A Coquette's Conquest. By Basil 20 

548 The Fatal Marriage* and The 

Shadow in the Corner. By 
Miss M. E. Braddon 10 

549 Dudley Carleon ; or, The Broth- 

er’s Secret, and George Caul- 
field’s Journey. By Miss M. 

E. Braddon 10 

550 Struck Down. Hawley Smart. . 10 

551 Barbara Heathcote’s Trial. By 

Rosa Nouchette Carey 20 

552 Hostages to Fortune. By Miss 

M. E. Braddon 20 

553 Birds of Prey. By Miss M. E. 

Braddon 20 


NO. PRICE. 

554 Charlotte’s Inheritance. By 

Miss M. E. Braddon 20 

555 Cara Roma. By Miss Grant — 20 

556 A Prince of Darkness. By F. 

Warden 20 

557 To the Bitter End. By Miss M. 

E. Braddon 20 

558 Poverty Corner. Bj 7 G. Manville 

Fen n . . 20 

562 Lewis Arundel ; or, The Rail- 
road of Life. By Frank E. 
Smedlev 20 

564 At Bay. By Mrs. Alexander... 10 

565 No Medium. By Annie Thomas. 10 

566 The Royal Highlanders : or, The 

Black Watch in Egypt. By 
James Grant 20 

568 The Perpetual Curate. By Mrs. 

Oliphant 20 

569 Harry Muir. By Mrs. Oliphant 20 

571 Paul Crew’s Story. By Alice 

Corny ns Carr 10 

572 Healer. By Jessie Fothergill. . 20 

573 Love’s Harvest. B. L. Farjeon 20 

575 The Finger of Fate. By Cap- 

tain Mavne Reid 20 

576 Her Martyrdom. By Charlotte 

M. Braeme, author of “ Dora 
Thorne” 20 

577 In Peril and Privation. By 

James Payn 10 

578 Mathias Sandorf. By Jules 

Verne. Part I. (Illustrated).. 10 

579 The Flower of Doom, and Other 

Stories. By M. Betliam-Ed- 
wards 10 

581 The Betrothed. (I Promessi 

Sposi.) By Allessandro Man- 
zoni 20 

582 Lucia, Hugh and Another. By 

Mrs. J. H. Needell 20 

583 Victory Deane. Cecil Griffith.. 20 

584 Mixed Motives 10 

585 A Drawn Game. By Basil 20 

586 “For Percival.” By Margaret 

Veley 20 

587 The Parson o’ Dumord. By G. 

Manville Fenn 20 


The foregoing works, contained in The Seaside Library, Pocket Edition, 
are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, postage free, on 
receipt of price. Parties ordering by mail will please order by numbers. Ad- 
dress 

GEORGE MCJNRO, Publisher, 

17 to ‘27 Vamlewater Street, New York. 


THE NEW YORK 

FASHION BAZAR BOOK OF THE TOILET 

PRICE 25 CENTS. 


GEORGE JIIUNRO, Publisher, 

17 to 27 Vandewater Street, N. Y. 


?, Q, Box 3751, 


THE NEW YORK 

FASHION BAZAR BOOK OF THE TOILET. 


PRI€£ 25 CENTS. 


GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

j» O. Box 8751. 17 to 27 Vandewater Street, New York, 


THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK 

WHICH 

WE CAN RECOMMEND TO EVERY LADY 

FOR THE 

PRESERVATION AND INCREASE OF HEALTH AND BEAUTY. 

IT CONTAINS FULL DIRECTIONS FOR ALL THE 

ARTS AND MYSTERIES OF PERSONAL DECORATION, 

AND FOE 

Increasing the Natural Graces of Form and Expression. 

ALL THE LITTLE AFFECTIONS OF THE 

£3 mm., lEHIair, :E 3 res and. Bod^r 

THAT DETRACT FROM APPEARANCE AND HAPPINESS 

Are Made the Subjects of Precise and Excellent Recipes. 

Ladies Are Instructed How to Reduce Their Weight 

■Without Injury to Health, and Without Producing 
Pallor and Weakness. 


NOTHING NECESSARY TO 

A COMPLETE TOILET BOOK OF RECIPES 

AND 

VALUABLE ADVICE AND INFORMATION 

HAS BEEN OVERLOOKED IN THE COMPILATION OF THIS VOLUME. 

For sale by all Newsdealers, or sent to any address on receipt of the price, 
prepaid, by the Publisher, 


MUNRO’S PUBLICATIONS. 


Old Sleuth Library 


THE MOST THRILLING DETECTIVE STORIES 

EVER PUBLISHED ! 


NO. PRICE. 

1 Old Sleuth the Detective 10c 

2 The King* of the Detectives 10c 

3 Old Sleuth’s Triumph. First half 10c 

3 Old Sleuth's Triumph. Second half 10c 

4 Under a Million Disguises 10c 

5 Night Scenes in New York 10c 

0 Old Electricity, the Lightning Detective 10c 

7 The Shadow Detective. First half 10c 

7 The Shadow Detective. Second half 10c 

8 Red-Light Will, the River Detective 10c 

0 Iron Burgess, the (xovernment Detective 10c 

10 The Brigands of New York 10c 

11 Tracked by a Yentriloquist 10c 

12 The Twin Detectives 10c 

13 The French Detective 10c 

14 Billy Wayne, the St. Louis Detective 10c 

15 The New York Detective 10c 

1G O’Neil McDarragli, the Irish Detective 10c 

17 Old Sleuth in Harness Again 10c 

18 The Lady Detective 10c 

10 The Yankee Detective 10c 

The Publisher will send any of the above works by mail, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of the price. Address 

GEORGE MTTNTRO, Publisher, 


P. O. Box 3751, 


17 to 27 Vande water Street, N. Y « 


JUST ISSUED, 


» 


JPLIET CORSON'S 

NEW FAMILY COOK BOOK. 

BY MISS JULIET CORSON, 

Author of “ Meals for the Million,” etc., etc. 
Superintendent of the New York School of Cookery. 


PRICE : HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH, $1.00. 

A COMPLETE COOK BOOK 

For Family Use in City and Country. 

CONTAINING 

PRACTICAL RECIPES AND FULL AND PLAIN DIREC- 
TIONS FOR COOKING ALL DISHES USED 
IN AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS. 

The Best and Most Economical Methods ot Cooking Meats, Fish, 
Vegetables, Sauces, Salads, Puddings and Pies. 

How to Prepare Relishes and Savory Accessories, Picked-up Dishes, 
Soups, Seasoning, Stuffing and Stews. 

How to Make Good Bread, Biscuit, Omelets, Jellies, Jams, Pan- 
cakes, Fritters and Fillets. 


Miss Corson is the best American writer on cooking. All of her recipes 
have been carefully tested in the New York School of Cookery. If her direc* 
tions are carefully followed there will be no failures and no reason for com- 
plaint. Her directions are always plain, very complete, and easily followed. 

Juliet Corson’s New Family Cook Book 

Is sold by all newsdealers. It will be sent, postpaid, on receipt of *rice f 
'Handsomely bound in cloth, $1.00, by 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

<p. o, Bo* TO1) 17 *o *7 Vandewater St„ New Yo?lt« 


MUNRO’S PUBLICATIONS. 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY 

ORDINARY EDITION. 


GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 


The following works contained in The Seaside Library. Ordinary Edition, 
are for sale by all newsdealers, or will be sent to any address, postage free, 
on receipt of the price, by the publisher. Parties ordering by mail will please 
order by numbers. 


MRS, ALEXANDER’S WORKS. 

30 Her Dearest Foe . 20 

36 The Wooing O’t 20 

46 The Heritage of Langdale 20 

370 Ralph Wilton’s Weird 10 

400 Which Shall it Be? 20 

532 Maid, Wife, or Widow 10 

1231 The Freres 20 

1259 Valerie’s Fate 10 

1391 Look Before You Leap 20 

1502 The Australian Aunt 10 

1595 The Admiral’s Ward 20 

1721 The Executor 20 

1934 Mrs. Vereker’s Courier Maid 10 

WILLIAM BLACK’S WORKS. 

13 A Princess of Thule 20 

28 A Daughter of Heth. 10 

47 In Silk Attire 10 

48 The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton 10 

51 Kilmeny 10 


TEE SEASIDE LIBRARY. —Or dinary Edition. 


53 The Monarch of Mincing Lane 10 

79 Madcap Violet (small type). ... 10 

604 Madcap Violet (large type).. 20 

242 The Three Feathers 10 

390 The Marriage of Moira Fergus, and The Maid of Killeena. 10 

417 Macleod of Dare 20 

451 Lady Silverdale’s Sweetheart 10 

568 Green Pastures and Piccadilly 10 

816 White Wings: A Yachting Romance. 10 

826 Oliver Goldsmith 10 

950 Sunrise: A Story of These Times ...... 20 

1025 The Pupil of Aurelius 10 

1032 That Beautiful Wretch 10 

1161 The Four MacNicols 10 

1264 Mr. Pisistratus Brown, M.P., in the Highlands 10 

1429 An Adventure in Tliule. A Story for Young People 10 

1556 Shandon Bells 20 

1683 Yolande 20 

1893 Judith Shakespeare: Her Love Affairs and other Advent- 
ures 20 

MISS M. E. BR ADDON’S WORKS. 

26 Aurora Floyd 20 

69 To the Bitter End 20 

89 The Lovels of Arden 20 

95 Dead Men’s Shoes 20 

109 Eleanor’s Victory. 20 

114 Darrell Markham 10 

140 The Lady Lisle 10 

171 Hostages to Fortune. 20 

190 Henry Dunbar 20 

215 Birds of Prey 20 

235 An Open Verdict - 20 

251 Lady Audley’s Secret 20 

254 The Octoroon 10 

260 Charlotte’s Inheritance 20 

287 Leighton Grauge 16 

295 Lost for Love . . 20 

322 Dead- Sea Fruit 2'* 

459 The Doctor’s W ife ....... 20 

469 Rupert Godwin .y - , . . . . 20 


THE SEASIDE LtEB.AU T.— Ordinary Edition. 


481 Vixen * 20 

482 The Cloven Foot 20 

500 Joshua Haggard’s Daughter 20 

519 Weavers and Weft 10 

525 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 

539 A Strange World 20 

550 Fenton’s Quest 20 

562 John Marchmont’s Legacy 20 

572 The Lady’s Mile - 20 

579 Strangers and Pilgrims 20 

581 Only a Woman (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

619 Taken at the Flood 20 

641 Only a Clod 20 

649 Publicans and Sinners 20 

656 George Caulfield’s Journey 10 

665 The Shadow in the Corner 10 

666 Bound to John Company; or, Robert Ainsleigh 20 

701 Barbara; or, Splendid Misery • 20 

705 Put to the Test (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

734 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daughter. Part 1 20 

734 Diavola; or, Nobody’s Daughter. Part II • 20 

811 Dudley Carleon 10 

828 The Fatal Marriage . • • 10 

837 Just as I Am; or, A Living Lie 20 

942 Asphodel 20 

1154 The Mistletoe Bough 20 

1265 Mount Royal 26 

1469 Flower and Weed 10 

1553 The Golden Calf 20 

1638 A Hasty Marriage (Edited by Miss M. E. Braddon) 20 

1715 Phantom Fortune 20 

1736 Under the Red Flag 10 

1877 An Ishmaelite • • 20 

1915 The Mistletoe Bough. Christmas, 1884 (Edited by Miss 

M. E. Braddon) 20 

CHARLOTTE, EMILY, AND ANNE BRONTE’S WORKS. 

3 Jane Eyre (in small type) 10 

396 Jane Eyre (in bold, handsome type) *. 20 

162 Shirley * 20 

811 The Professor ^ 


THE SEASIDE LIBRARY.— Ordinary Edition. 


118 Great Expectations. 20 

187 David Copperfield. . . 20 

WO Nicholas Nickleby , 20 

213 Barnaby Rudge 20 

218 Dombey and Son 20 

289 No Thoroughfare (Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins) .... 10 

247 Martin Chuzzlewit 20 

272 The Cricket on the Hearth 10 

284 Oliver Twist 20 

289 A Christmas Carol 10 

297 The Haunted Man 10 

304 Little Dorrit 20 

308 The Chimes 10 

317 The Battle of Life 10 

325 Our Mutual Friend 20 

337 Bleak House 20 

352 Pickwick Papers 20 

359 Somebody’s Luggage • 10 

367 Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings 10 

372 Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices 10 

875 Mugby Junction 10 

403 Tom Tiddler’s Ground < 10 

498 The Uncommercial Traveler 20 

521 Master Humphrey’s Clock . * . 10 

625 Sketches by Boz - 20 

639 Sketches of Young. Couples ' 10 

827 The Mudfog Papers, &c 10 

860 The Mystery of Edwin Drood 20 

900 Pictures From Italy 10 

1411 A Child’s History of England 20 

1464 The Picnic Papers 20 

1558 Three Detective Anecdotes, and Other Sketches 10 

WORKS BY THE AUTHOR OF “DORA THORNE.” 

449 More Bitter than Death 10 

618 Madolin’s Lover 20 

656 A Golden Dawn 10 

678 A Dead Heart 10 

718 Lord Lynne’s Choice; or, True Love Never Runs Smooth. 10 

746 Which Loved Him Best 20 

846 Dora Thorne • 20 

921 At War with Herself 10 


THE 

New York Fashion Bazar. 

THE BEST AMERICAN HOME MAGAZINE. 

Price 25 Cents per Copy. Subscription Price $2*50 per Year. 


A handsome chromo will be given free to every yearly subscriber to the 
New York Monthly Fashion Bazar whose name will be on our books when 
the Christmas number is issued. Persons desirous of availing themselves of 
this elegant present will please forward their subscription as soon as possible. 

The New York Fashion Bazar is a magazine for ladies. It contains 
everything which a lady’s magazine ought to contain. The fashions in dress 
which it publishes are new and reliable. Particular attention is devoted to 
fashions for children of all ages. Its plates and descriptions will assist every 
lady in the preparation of her wardrobe, both in making new dresses and re- 
modeling old ones. The fashions are derived from the best houses and are 
always practical as well as new and tasteful. 

Every lady reader of The New York Fashion Bazar can make her own 
dresses with the aid of Munro’s Bazar Patterns. These are carefully cut to 
measure and pinned into the perfect semblance of the garment. They are use- - 
f ul in altering old as well as in making new clothing. 

The Bazar Embroidery Supplements form an important part of the maga- 
zine. Fancy work is carefully described and illustrated, and new patterns 
given in every number. 

All household matters are fully and interestingly treated. Home informa- 
tion, decoration, personal gossip, correspondence, and recipes for cooking 
have each a department. 

Among its regular contributors are Mary Cecil Hay, “The Duchess,” 
author of “ Molly Bawn,” Lucy Randall Comfort, Charlotte M. Braeme, 
author of “ Dora Thorne,” Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, Mary E. Bryan, 
author of “ Manch,” and Florence A. Warden, author of “ The House on the 
Marsh.” 

The stories published in The New York Fashion Bazar are the best that 
can be had. 

We employ no canvassers to solicit subscriptions for The New York Fash- 
ion Bazar. All persons representing themselves as such are swindlers. 

The New York Fashion Bazar is for sale by all newsdealers, price 25 cents 
per copy. Subscription price $2.50 per year. Address 

GEORGE MUNRO, Publisher, 

17 to 27 Vandewater Street, N. Y. 


P. O. Box 3751 


THE CELEBRATED 



GRAND, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT PIANOS, 



ARE AT PRESENT THE MOST POPUIiAR 

AND PREFERRED BY THE LEADING ARTISTS. 

SO 1191 KU <fc CO., Mil mi factuvei-s, No. 149 to 155 E. 14tli Street, N. Y. 


FIRST PRIZE 

DIPLOMA. 

Centennial Exbibi- 
tinn, 1876: Montreal, 
1881 and 1882. 

The enviable po- 
sition Sohmer & 
Co. hold among 
American Piano 
Manufacturers is 
solely due to the 
merits of their in- 
struments. 


They are used 
in Conservato- 
ries, Schools and 
Seminaries, on ac- 
count of their su- 
perior tone and 
unequaled dura- 
bility. 

The SOHMER 
Piano is a special 
favorite with the 
leading musicians 
and critics. 


FROM THE 
NERVE- GIVING 
PRINCIPLES OF 
THE OX-BRAIN 
AND THE GERM 
OF THE WHEAT 
AND OAT. 

BRAIN AND NERTE FOOD 

CISOSKY’S 

VITALIZED PHOSPHITES 

Is a standard with nil Physicians who treat 
nervous or mental disorders. It builds up 
worn out nerves, banishes sleeplessness, 
neuralgia and side headache. It promotes 
good digestion. It restores the energy lost 
by nervousness, debility, or over-exhaust- 
ion : regenerates weakened vital powers. 


“ It amplifies bodily and mental power fo 
the present generation, and proves the sur- 
vival of the fittest to the next.”— Bismarck. 


“ It strengthens nervous power. It is the 
only medical relief I have ever known for 
an over-worked brain.”— Gladstone. 


“ I really urge you to put it to the test.” — 
Miss Emily Faithful 

F. CROSBY CO., 56 W, 25th St., N. Y. 

For sale by Druggists, or by mail $1. 



Munro’s Publications. 

THE SEASIDE LIBRARY 

POCKET EDITION. 


35 Lady Audley’s Se- 
cret 20 

56 Phantom Fortune. . 20 

74 Aurora Floyd 20 

110 Under the Red Flag 10 
153 The Cioiden Calf. ... 20 

204 Vixen 20 

211 The Octoroon 10 

234 Barbara; or, Splen. 

did Misery 20 

263 An Ishmaelite 20 

315 The Mistletoe 
Dough. Edited by 
.11 Us liraddon.... 20 
434 Wyllard's Weird.. 20 
478 Diav la; or, No. 
body’s Daughter. 

Part 1 20 

478 Diavola; or. No. 
bodv’s Daughter. 

Part II 20 

480 Harried In Haste. 
Edited by Hiss ill, 

E. liraddon 20 

487 Pnt to the Test. 

Edited by liiss M. 

E. Draddon 20 

488 Joshua Haggard’s 

Daughter 20 

4*9 Itupert Godwin.... 20 
495 Mount Royal 20 


a Woman. 
Edited hv Miss M. 

E. liraddon 20 

497 The Lady’s Mile... 20 

498 Only a Clod 20 

499 The Cloven Foot. . . 20 

611 A Strange World. . 20 
515 Sir Jasper’s Tenant 20 
524 Strangers and Pil- 
grims 20 

529 The Doctor’s Wife. 20 
542 Fenton’s Quest.... 20 
544 Cut by the County; 

or, Grace Darnel. 10 
64S The Fatal Marriage, 


and The Shadow 

in the Corner 10 

549 Dudley Carleon; or, 

The Brother’s Se- 
cret, and George 
Caulfield's Jour- 
ney 16 

5(2 Hostages toFort une 20 

553 Birds of Prey 20 

554 Charlotte’s Inher- 

itance. (Seqnel to 
“ Birds of Prey.”) 20 
557 To the Hitter End. 20 

559 Taken at the Flood 20 

560 Asphodel 20 

561 Just, as I am; or, A 

Living Lie 20 


Any of the above works will he sent by mail, postpaid, 
on receipt of the price. Address 

GFOItGE Ml'NRO, Publisher, w 

P. O. Box 3751. 17 to 27 Vandewater >t., N. Y, 


MISS M. E. BRAPOON’S WORKS 
496 Only 












nwqr 




rtj 

f y 

lAI A] 






mwv* 'a 

wmn " y 

^ A A '• 2 ~ - 

p^Af^yv 

^ VV.£»ftAwWi 

AAnnCL^^ 

\m¥rvN^N^^ 

^ » V , \fiM <* ' f V - 'V i 

* aAu,U rs ^ . 

. ' V £ r\ /A A £ C ' ft & A 








